When board member Tom Conrad stepped in as Sonos's interim CEO, he wasn't automatically given the permanent role. The board required him to go through the full external candidate process, including vision presentations and even a personality test, ensuring a rigorous and fair evaluation.

Nike's first external CEO, Bill Perez, failed despite his credentials because he couldn't adapt to the company's unique, collaborative culture. He was accustomed to strict roles, which clashed with Nike's team-oriented atmosphere. This demonstrates that cultural fit can be more critical than a perfect resume for executive roles.

Facing a senior leadership exodus and slowing growth, Mario Schlosser took the counter-intuitive step of asking his board to interview his team and assess his performance. This act of extreme transparency validated his strategy, re-energized his team, and stopped most of the key leaders from leaving.

A CEO who stays too long creates an organization optimized to respond only to them, causing other skills and response mechanisms to weaken. Leadership changes are healthy because they force a company to develop a more balanced and resilient set of capabilities, breaking the imperial CEO model.

When Home Depot's culture began to erode due to a mindset that prioritized cost over people, the board's solution wasn't a new initiative, but a leadership change. Ken Langone credits the new CEO, Frank Blake, as a "founder" for his role in restoring the company's core cultural values.

Removing a founding CEO is an act of last resort for a board, described as being as risky as open heart surgery. It's so emotionally and operationally draining that it's often easier to just lose money. This extreme step is only taken when a founder's decisions threaten to bankrupt the company or their behavior creates systemic problems.

The ongoing, high-level turnover and internal conflict at OpenAI is a major red flag for board members, regardless of external success. This level of C-suite "load balancing" consumes CEO time and signals deep-seated organizational dysfunction that can derail even the most promising companies.

Companies typically promote CEOs from within. An external hire implies a crisis or a failure of succession planning. Therefore, an incoming external CEO has a mandate for significant change. Playing it safe with incremental adjustments squanders the opportunity and fails to address underlying issues.

To fix a failing company's broken defaults, changes must be abrupt and aggressive. Gradual 'change management' fails because it doesn't create the necessary shock to the system or repel misaligned employees who are part of the problem.