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After Al Green announced his intention to retire as CEO, a search firm was retained to manage the process of finding a new CEO for Autodesk. The Board of Directors appointed a search committee, chaired by Jim Warren, which appealed for input, company-wide, on which criteria should govern our search. Here's my response.
by John Walker — October 24th, 1991
This paper is an attempt to identify the characteristics Autodesk
should look for in candidates to become the new CEO. As you'll see in
reading it, I don't think there's any single precise picture that fits
the job; there are essential prerequisites, but not a unique correct
profile. I use male pronouns for concision and to avoid sounding like
a politically correct Marin County weenie, not to specify the gender
of candidates acceptable to me.![[Footnote]](i/footnote.png){kind=small}
My first assumption is that Autodesk is looking for an individual who will be a leader and a strong, highly-competent manager. Autodesk is not searching for a super-hero, nor are such characteristics needed to succeed as CEO, nor would we likely to find such a person if we were foolish enough to seek one.
Second, we cannot expect to find candidates who have already demonstrated success in running organisations of Autodesk's size and complexity. People who are currently CEOs of multinational S&P 500 companies with a billion dollar market cap, quarter billion revenue, rapid growth, gut busting margins, and more money than Scrooge McDuck are rarely out on the job market, and if they are it's probably an indication we don't want 'em. Whoever we pick will almost certainly be assuming the largest challenge so far in their life, and that's even more reason to focus on the fundamental capabilities that indicate the potential for growth into and in the job. If you find Bill Gates or Philippe Kahn standing in line at the unemployment office…hire them, but don't waste a lot of time looking.
The CEO must be a qualified, professional manager with experience in an organisation of Autodesk's size and scope.
Companies as large as Autodesk have to be run, to a substantial extent, by analysis and manipulation of financial aggregates. A CEO is doomed to fail if he doesn't understand how to do this. He must not only be able to see problems and solutions in the numbers, but know what numbers are needed to reveal what's really going on, and how to obtain them. The CEO need not have a financial background but must understand the kinds of financial controls, reporting, and diagnostics that are required to run a company like Autodesk and be able to put them in place, manage them as the company grows, and use them day to day to run the company. I believe it is essential that any candidate be conversant with such matters, and to be able to cite, limited only by confidentiality, the financial characteristics of the organisation he currently runs to an extent that demonstrates this ability.
The CEO must be able to build a management team and use that team effectively to run the organisation.
We will never find a candidate who is an expert in the CAD business, a marketing genius, a super salesman, a financial whiz, a superb motivator of people, a born leader, a compelling communicator, and a visionary with a talent for spotting new opportunities for the company, all at the same time. That would require a super-hero. Yet, when the door closes and Autodesk's senior management sits down to decide what they are going to do with our company, every one of those talents must be present in the room; otherwise an essential component of wise and informed business decision making will be absent, and the decisions will be taken in ignorance and will imperil the company.
It is essential that a new CEO have demonstrated success in recruiting, operating, and managing a complex process with such a multidisciplinary team. It goes without saying that the candidate must have earned and retained the respect of the individuals with whom he works closely, and with subordinates anywhere within his organisation. A candidate must have demonstrated success in developing plans and strategies of his own and managing their implementation and eventual success by others.
The CEO must be able to lead the company, developing the company's fundamental business strategy and then articulating that strategy inside and outside the organisation.
This is so fundamental a part of the job of CEO that it cannot be delegated, not even to another member of the senior management team. Any candidate's background must convincingly demonstrate success in this essential qualification for any executive position.
The CEO must understand the importance of excellence, and be effective in obtaining it from an organisation.
Most initially-successful companies screw up because they've lost the will to do their best, or a belief that it's even possible. The CEO must set the standard for the company and manage the company to meet it. Sustained success in business comes not from superhuman effort or super genius, but from building and running an organisation that does extraordinary things with ordinary people. Any candidate must understand this and have consistently demonstrated such success in his career. Each candidate will have a background in one specific operating field or another: sales, marketing, finance, technology, whatever. They must personally excel in that field, and be able to persuade those with the same expertise that they do.
The CEO must approach Autodesk as an entrepreneurial company faced with opportunities, not a static organisation faced with problems.
The candidate must understand the nature and size of the opportunity Autodesk has and be excited about realising it and not approach the job as presiding over a ready-built money machine. I believe Autodesk has a genuine chance to grow into a business as large as IBM or Boeing. We need a CEO who's interested in making that happen.
Your reaction to at this point is probably, “That's it? What about experience in high-tech, or international companies, or CAD, or in public companies. What about the size and nature of the organisations the person has run?”
I believe we must be interested in every aspect of each candidate's background, weighing them in terms of the extent they demonstrate his qualifications or lack thereof to meet the challenges that will be waiting on the desk the morning he sits down at it the first time. But as far as I'm concerned, the only requirements are the ones I listed.
I believe people with a wide variety of backgrounds could succeed as CEO of Autodesk, which is not to say the job is easy; only that being a CAD guru, a numbers whiz, or a super salesman isn't the single background that qualifies one to do it.
The
most
essential
part
of
the
process
of
selecting
a CEO will be the
interviews the candidate has with the operating managers of the
company, the people he will, if chosen, have to rely on to implement
the policies and strategy he develops, or develop and/or replace if
they do not. If we select a candidate who is enthusiastically
endorsed by Ruth Connolly, John Lynch, Pete O'Dell, Lew Goldklang,
Richard Cuneo, Frank Balinson, Tom Mahood, Volker Kleinn, Scott Davis,
and Marc LeBrun, I'm not going to lose any sleep over whether the
person is likely to succeed in the job, even if I'd never met the guy.
In the process of interviewing candidates, one of the most important
indicators I expect to use is the individual's reaction to the various
people he has met already within Autodesk. If the person has the
right sense of people, he's probably going to be able to get the job
done.
As unlikely as it may seem that the list of people I reeled off would ever agree on anything, it is essential that any candidate not only pass the scrutiny of the overwhelming majority of these people, not only as somebody who's “OK”, but as a person they're excited about reporting to. And if one or two individuals dissent, then it's likely their careers at Autodesk may not continue far into the term of the new CEO, as the first priority of any new CEO must be assembling a team he can work with effectively.
Although I certainly believe that choosing the next CEO is the most important decision Autodesk faces at this time, I'm not as worried about our choosing unwisely as most of the people I speak to seem to be. I believe there is a tremendous pool of wisdom in the operating and middle managers at Autodesk, the people who now feel so frustrated at not being permitted to carry out the plans that seem so obvious to them. I am confident that when they see a person for whom they could work, a person who would support them in turning Autodesk around, they will recognise that talent, endorse the person, and urge the board to select him. We're probably going to have to interview more people than we'd like to, but I think we'll be able to conclude the search with satisfaction and confidence, not in frustration and acceptance of a “least-bad” alternative.
If all of this seems too amorphous, I think in part it's because we won't get a real feel for what we're looking for until we do a little looking. Just as in buying a house, the best way to understand what you're looking for is seeing several alternatives; it helps you sort the truly important from the merely desirable.
If we can agree on a set of fundamental requirements, whether these or others, whether a short list or a long one, it'll help sort out people who simply haven't demonstrated the qualifications for the job. Then it's up to us, through interviews, to decide, among a series of qualified people, who is most likely to succeed.
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