The board at Uber swiped left, swiped right, swiped left again before landing on Dara Khosrowshahi — The former CEO of Expedia who was appointed chief executive of the ride-sharing giant last week.
This revolving door of chief executives is adding strain to employees, customers and other stakeholders. So, how can you appoint a corporate leader in the new ‘Tinder Economy of CEOs’ – swiping through a database of very seasoned chief executives before choosing one as a match?
This raises the question of whether this revolving door is actually good for business. How are companies navigating through this constant change in leadership? Could this actually have a negative effect on a company’s bottom-line over time?
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Patric Palm, CEO of Favro, is an agile strategist who has spoken on this topic at industry conferences throughout Europe. In an exclusive interview with Information, Palm explains how these changes in the c-suite affect company productivity. He also explains how this has created a need for new technologies that can help companies push through leadership changes more efficiently.
1. What is the “Tinder Economy of CEOs”?
Sometimes it’s said that the issue with Tinder is that it makes people not invest in their relationships because they so easily can jump to the next thing in the hope it will be better. Today, it’s the same thing with CEOs.
Company performance is more transparent than ever and as the patience with CEOs shrinks by the day, there is an increasing supply of candidates eager to take the job. The nervousness of markets and investors makes boards start swiping for new CEOs, where in the old days the CEO could rely on larger amount of trust and patience.
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2. What are the challenges with this model? How is this revolving door of leadership adding strain to employees, customers and other stakeholders?
The biggest problem with participating in the Tinder Economy of CEOs is that a constant change in leadership makes it difficult to execute long-term goals. Another issue is building trust and and continuity with key stakeholders. That said, short-term leadership complicates internal and external relationships.
3. How can companies overcome the challenges brought on by the Tinder Economy of CEOs? What tools and strategies are needed?
The big picture challenge for any company today is an increased speed of change in the markets. Companies needs to gain the ability of fast adaption to survive. They need to be hyper adaptable to change from team level to the boardroom. The best way to do this is to learn from software development teams and start-ups. They pioneered agile management practices to deal with high levels of uncertainty.
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This level of change has now risen to the heads of companies and they need to adopt a more flow based management style with continuously updated company backlogs to pull goals from.
In this way, the CEO can formulate a clear vision, break it down into increments of success in a backlog, and show step by step progress event when times are tough. This also means higher demands on board members. Agile board work requires a higher level of engagement and professionalism than ever before.
