The Economist’s Schumpeter focuses on today’s corporate CEOs, some of the world’s most powerful bosses who are “strikingly mainly for their blandness.” Among those mentioned include Sam Palmisano at IBM, Tony Hayward at BP, Terry Leahy at Tesco, and Vittorio Colao at Vodafone. “Watch the parade of chief executives who appear on CNBC every day, or drop in to a high-powered conference, and you begin to wonder whether cloning is more advanced than scientists are letting on,” he quips, noting that today’s C-suite is filled with a more diverse brood, including more females and ethnic diversity. Despite this change, Schumpeter compares today’s Financial Times “Top 50 Women in Business” as “every bit as adept with the cliché as their male colleagues.” Yesterday’s vivid leaders are replaced with today’s “faceless chief executives.” A new breed of “humble” bosses have taken the helm of today’s leading companies and Schumpeter fears the trend is “surely in danger of taking all this too far.”
Fun with CEOs
A new breed of “humble” bosses have taken the helm of today’s leading companies and Schumpeter fears the trend is “surely in danger of taking all this too far.”
November 12, 2009 by Gretchen Michals Salois