CEO succession: choosing who comes after the leader who defined the company

Five days at Coca-Cola

In October 1997 Coca-Cola's chairman and chief executive, Roberto Goizueta, died. Five days later the board held a special meeting and elected Douglas Ivester to both jobs: the tenth chairman in the company's history, and the one everyone had expected.

Ivester had been president and chief operating officer since 1994. He was the designated heir and already doing much of the job, so the handover was treated as a formality. By late 1999 the company had been in a slump for roughly two years, and analysts described his position in blunt terms.

“the great misfortune of being in charge of Coca-Cola during perhaps its worst period ever”Analysts on Douglas Ivester, as recorded in the Coca-Cola case

In December 1999 the board accepted his resignation, effective April 19, 2000, about two and a half years after he took over. The shares fell sharply on the news.

Thirteen years later Costco handed over the same job the slow way. On February 1, 2010 its board made Craig Jelinek president and chief operating officer, put him on the board, and folded him into an Office of the President with three senior leaders, among them the chairman and the finance chief. He became chief executive two years later. Over his tenure revenue grew from $99 billion to $242.3 billion and the warehouse count from 617 to 861.

Both boards picked an insider who was already doing the work. One treated the choice as settled the day the seat was empty. The other spent two years finding out, in public, whether it was right. That gap, between naming a successor and testing one, runs through this whole guide.

What ceo succession is

It is a board's decision more than a chief executive's. A sitting leader can recommend a successor, as Steve Jobs did in writing for Tim Cook, but the board makes the appointment, lives with it, and is the one that has to undo it if it goes wrong.

Why it is so hard

On paper it is a hiring decision. In a real company, three things make it unlike any other hire.

The ways companies did it

The decisions on record take four shapes. Each answers the same question, who is next, with a different amount of time to decide.

What 27 companies did

Here is every decision on record, placed by the year it was made and marked by how it turned out. Hover a mark, or open the table, for the company and the outcome.

Of the 20 decisions that can be judged, 15 were never undone, 2 were walked back and 3 were kept only in part. Another 7 are too early to judge: a board's choice is reported the day it is made, and its consequences are not.

Read "never undone" carefully. HP's board fired Léo Apotheker in September 2011, less than eleven months into the job, and made one of its own directors, Meg Whitman, chief executive the same day. In February 2026 another chief executive left and the board again put one of its own members in as interim chief. The revolving door had already cost more than $83 million in severance. That decision counts as never undone because the board kept making it.

The walk-backs

Put the walk-backs and the half-measures side by side and two patterns show. Both outright reversals put a person in charge without testing them in the job first: a handover waved through as a formality, and a digital pivot handed to a director.

The other pattern is in the half-measures. Apple, JPMorgan Chase and General Motors each held a seat or a structure open on purpose, and each later had to fill it or take it apart. An open seat is not a decision avoided; it is a decision postponed.

The handovers that held had something in common too: the successor had already done the job, under observation, before the title changed. Charlie Bell had been running McDonald's as president since a promotion in December 2002. Jelinek spent two years in Costco's Office of the President. Durcan was Micron's president and chief operating officer the day the bylaws made him chief executive.

A board can name a successor in a day. Testing one takes years.

What the share price did

For many of the decisions there is a clean market record: the company's total return over the three years after the decision, against the S&P 500.

Both reversals with a market record sit near the bottom of the chart. Coca-Cola trailed the index by 54.4 points over the three years after Ivester took over, and Nike by 35.1 points after Donahoe's appointment was announced.

Read the top of the chart with care. Apple's 2019 decision to leave Jony Ive's job unfilled, kept only in part, sits highest of all, at 150.1 points ahead. Three years of share price says more about the company than about one appointment.

How to run this decision

If you are weighing a version of this choice, here is what the record suggests doing, in order.

1. Put the successor in the job before the seat is open

   Not the title, the work. Costco gave Jelinek the operating job and a board seat two years ahead. Bell was effectively running McDonald's well before Cantalupo died. JPMorgan's co-presidents had held their titles for about two years when Dimon went into surgery.

   Seen in: Costco, 2010 · McDonald's, 2004 · JPMorgan Chase, 2020
2. Make the test public, so it can be failed

   Costco's runway existed so that the handover would be survivable even if the heir turned out wrong. A private assumption cannot fail until it is too late; Coca-Cola's designated heir was out about two and a half years after the formality of his election.

   Seen in: Costco, 2010 · Berkshire Hathaway, 2025 · Coca-Cola, 1997
3. Write down the emergency mechanics before you need them

   Micron's bylaws named an interim chief executive the day its leader died. Total filled the top job in 36 hours from a successor long groomed and a former chairman held in reserve. A sudden death tests the paperwork, not the board's judgment under pressure.

   Seen in: Micron Technology, 2012 · Total, 2014 · Texas Roadhouse, 2021
4. Ask whether the job can be done before asking who should do it

   Yahoo hired the most credible product leader it could find for a core business the market valued at almost nothing, and the company was sold five years later. HP split itself in two rather than ask one successor to carry both halves of its legacy.

   Seen in: Yahoo, 2012 · HP, 2015
5. Say what the successor may not change

   Jelinek left the $1.50 hot dog alone. Bell and Skinner carried Cantalupo's turnaround forward rather than replacing it. Naming the fixed points turns a broad mandate into a narrow one, and a narrow mandate is one a board can supervise.

   Seen in: Costco, 2010 · McDonald's, 2004
6. Say which is moving, the title or the control

   Alphabet's founders gave Sundar Pichai the chief executive title in 2019 and kept roughly half the votes. The Lee family paid a record inheritance tax and came out owning more of Samsung. Both are legitimate; the people who will work for the new leader deserve to know which one they are in.

   Seen in: Alphabet (Google), 2019 · Samsung, 2021

Warning signs

What it has looked like when this decision was going wrong.

• The heir has been designated for years and the handover is described as a formality.Coca-Cola, 1997
• The board reaches for one of its own directors.HP, 2011 and 2026 · Nike, 2019
• The arrangement the handover relied on is taken apart soon afterward.JPMorgan Chase, 2020
• Everyone knows who the likely successor is, and the company calls the question premature.General Motors, 2025

All 27 cases

Each case is one company at one decision: what was on the table, what it chose, why, and what followed, with every fact sourced.

Questions

What is CEO succession planning?

Deciding, before the job is open, who could run the company next and how the handover would happen, including in an emergency. The boards on record that handled sudden deaths smoothly, such as Micron, Total and Texas Roadhouse, were following a plan they already had.

Is an internal or external CEO successor better?

The record does not settle it. The handovers that held were mostly insiders who had already done the work, such as Costco's Jelinek and McDonald's Bell. But Coca-Cola's insider was pushed out, and Nike's choice of a sitting director was later undone in favor of a long-time insider.

What happens when a CEO dies suddenly?

The companies on record that recovered fastest had decided in advance. Micron's bylaws made its president interim chief executive the same day. McDonald's named a successor within hours of its chairman's death, and Total had a new chief executive within 36 hours.

Why do boards bring back a former CEO?

Usually because the business is struggling and the board wants someone who already knows it. Starbucks returned Howard Schultz in 2008 amid falling traffic, and Procter & Gamble recalled A.G. Lafley in 2013. Disney did the same in 2022, then formed a board committee to own the next succession.