When I last spoke to A.G. Lafley back in November, he was raving to me about all the things that his successor, Robert McDonald, had managed to accomplish in his five months as chief executive of Procter & Gamble. So much so, in fact, that I asked him whether he had much to do as chairman of the board these days.
On July 1, A.G. Lafley woke up at 6 a.m., worked out, showered, and headed to the office in downtown Cincinnati, just as he had for nearly a decade. But this was the first morning in more than 3,000 days that he was no longer the chief executive of Procter & Gamble.
There's heavy turnover in the C-suite these days. The latest CEO transition came this week, when Robert McDonald was named the new CEO of $84 billion Procter & Gamble, the successor to nine-year chief A.G. Lafley, who will step down July 1.
When news broke Tuesday that Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley would step down in July, all eyes turned to his successor, COO Bob McDonald. The transition comes at a crucial juncture for P&G, which will rely on McDonald's skills as an operator going forward. But what's less known -- and perhaps equally valuable -- is that the incoming CEO is, like Lafley, an impassioned manager.
When Procter & Gamble global business units president Susan Arnold announced in March that she was leaving P&G, the question resurfaced: Who else could possibly replace A.G. Lafley, the company's longtime CEO?
Procter & Gamble started out 2008 with a bang: It sold off its Folgers brand, put through price increases and moved more aggressively into upscale beauty treatments when it bought hair-care brand Frederic Fekkai. <P>But as the economy ran out of steam, so did P&G. After a profitable fiscal year that ended in June, the company cut estimates as quarterly sales dropped. P&G is now heavily promoting value, but CEO A.G. Lafley says he's holding the fort on those price hikes. Will they stick? - <I>J.R.</I>
In this adaptation from their forthcoming book, The Game-Changer, A.G. Lafley and management consultant Ram Charan describe the principles of innovation and give a grass-roots example of how listening to the bosses in this instance, Mexican housewives - can pay off.
One of the great frustrations encountered by today's most powerful people is that the power they've worked so hard to amass may just stop working. It isn't that they could lose what they have - it's that it simply may no longer matter to the world.
The Greenbrier resort in Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, with three golf courses and a spa the size of a football stadium, is a long way from China's factory floors. But in early June, the 229-year-old Georgian-style estate hosted a retreat for dozens of CEOs and other executives from U.S. consumer product companies. And Chinese manufacturing was on their minds.
When Mark Ketchum joined the board of struggling consumer products maker Newell Rubbermaid at the end of 2004, he had no idea what he was in for. A 33-year veteran of Procter & Gamble, where he headed mega-brands like Pampers, Ketchum, 57, was asked to serve as interim CEO after the board finally lost its patience with underperforming former chief Joe Galli in October 2005.
A deep conversation with either General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt or Procter & Gamble chief A.G. Lafley is rare and valuable, but getting both of them together - that's like winning the lottery.
A.G. Lafley and Jeffrey Immelt have lots in common. They're silver-haired CEOs launched from Harvard Business School to become chiefs of giant, iconic companies.
Fortune: The CEO workoutupdated: Thu Jul 06 2006 14:48:00
Welcome to the bod pod," chirps Amanda Evans, who is manning the six-foot-high egg-shaped capsule. Step inside the pod, and it measures your body-fat ratio - a figure that could hold no terror for ...
Fortune: Another space raceupdated: Thu Jun 08 2006 10:28:00
There may be no "I" in "team," but there is one smack in the middle of the word "office." The most heated discussions over office design center around individual, not communal, workspace. But that'...
SECRET NO. 01: Compare everything you do against your rivals. HP
Information everywhere. Connectivity at all hours. A smaller world.
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it." The man who coined this aphorism, Warren Buffett, knows a thing or two about great reputations: His company, Berkshire Hathaway, has long been a fixture on our list of America's Most Admired Companies.
Lots of executives like to think of themselves as relentless. But Bob McDonald defines the word.
[The following text appears on the Inside Cover.] 10 TOP LEADERS TELL THEIR SECRETS
CNNMoney: Follow these leadersupdated: Mon Dec 05 2005 09:39:00
Demand criticism. Let subordinates have the floor. And think more like Vaclav Havel. Ten top bosses share their stories, their advice and what they've learned from great leaders of the past.
Fortune: Bigger and BIGGERupdated: Mon Sep 05 2005 00:01:00
IT'S ONE THING FOR FORTUNE'S Fastest-Growing Companies--with median annual sales of just $582 million--to increase revenues and profits by double-digit percentages. It's quite another for the giant...
Fortune: THE WORLD OF IDEASupdated: Mon Jul 25 2005 00:01:00
Operating globally involves more than reaching out to far-flung locales for needy customers, low-cost labor, and ready capital. The smartest companies are looking far afield for innovation as well....
Business 2.0: Growing Tomorrowupdated: Sun May 01 2005 00:01:00
Your company may be on top now, but someone somewhere is gunning for you. It's easy for yesterday's revolutionaries to become today's reactionaries, warns management guru Gary Hamel. "The wet cemen...
Business 2.0: P&G's Growth Wizardupdated: Sat Jan 01 2005 00:01:00
By the time A.G. Lafley became Procter & Gamble's CEO, the company had lost its magic. Once a paragon of marketing and brand building, the consumer-products behemoth didn't seem to have many fresh ...
Procter & Gamble Co. reported Monday that its earnings soared 44 percent in its fourth fiscal quarter with growth in its beauty and health care businesses pushing its full-year sales past $50 billion for the first time.
When Procter & Gamble purchased Iams five years ago, many people worried that the rule-bound behemoth would muck up the growth of the savvy pet-food marketer. Iams was one of those companies (think...
Since taking over P&G in 2000, this 56-year-old former Navy man and company lifer has quietly skippered the $43 billion colossus back to profitability. But you won't hear him constantly bragging ab...
Melanie Turner has forgotten her shopping list. But the 42-year-old pension consultant, who has just entered Costco's 133,000-square-foot warehouse store in Norwalk, Conn., doesn't seem to mind. Tu...
Fortune: First-class Reunionupdated: Mon May 26 2003 00:01:00
Judging from the guests at Procter & Gamble's alumni gathering, the business world is run by Proctoids. GE's Jeff Immelt, 3M's Jim McNerney, and eBay's Meg Whitman were among 350 former P&G employe...
The last time Wal-Mart announced a stock split, in April 1999, Warren Buffett decided to buy 100 million shares of the retail giant. But after accumulating five million shares, then trading at abou...
You probably don't know Bob Eckert. And he would just as soon keep it that way. A dentist's son raised in Elmhurst, Ill., he was so low wattage in high school that "you never would have predicted t...
Marv Albert: Well, it's a big welcome back for all the fans at home watching the final minutes of the game. If you're just tuning in, this is a FORTUNE CEO basketball dream. The CEOs are down by 10...
"We've got to keep our eyes on France and Spain," cautions a senior executive at Procter & Gamble. "They could be the next Germany!"
© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|