The new CEO: agent of change or accidental terminator?

The four questions to ask in order to reorganize your top team productively rather than axing at will. 

You are a newly appointed CEO. Looking around the boardroom you see many figures who look comfortable on their chairs, some mildly distracted by their phones. You wonder if they look too comfortable or slightly complacent. After all, the selection committee warned you that the team, especially the core team, has been there for a too long a time. Knowledge and customer retention is what you hear has led to this. Yet you have been told you have to be an agent of change and we all know that what has led us here, won’t lead us there. 

In 2017, Jan Jenisch, previously CEO of Swiss construction chemicals firm Sika, was appointed CEO of LafargeHolcim, the global leader in the cement industry. Completed in 2015, the merger of French Lafarge and Swiss Holcim had been challenging from the beginning with intense competitive scrutiny and repeated renegotiations of the deal…