“When Joseph Galli Jr. got forced out as chief executive officer at Newell Rubbermaid Inc., he was certain he would brush himself off and try for another CEO job.
“From his father, a school dropout who built a successful scrap yard near Pittsburgh, Mr. Galli learned to work hard and never give up,” writes Joann Lublin in today’s Wall Street Journal.
But the lessons that propelled Mr. Galli to the top of the corporate world proved less useful in selling himself to a new employer. Instead, he encountered a paradox known to many out-of-work CEOs: Though they are driven like few others to succeed, once they fail, many don’t get a second chance to run a public company.