A new CEO steps into an old CEO’s shoes. Rules, habits, expectations, manner and style were all shaped by the predecessor who – though now gone, like the ghost of Hamlet, still calls from the ramparts. “I like the pictures in your office!” I said to one CEO – “Oh, these were all chosen by my predecessor,” he replied. The predecessor is not the only ghost to contend with – there are spectres of past jobs done, past identities and relationships that also need to be exorcised in order for the new CEO to inhabit the role authentically, to shape their own environment. Harder still if you are a woman stepping into the size 10 lace-ups of a forerunner, or a marketeer succeeding an economist, a black man succeeding a white, a young leader taking over from the old - or living, following on from the dead.
Next year we are planning a leadership programme around the Socratic question: “How should we live?” that will explore both what we are handed – and what we hand on. We will begin with an exploration of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a case study and, using music, explore how we can make an inherited melody our own. We will also consider Socrates himself and what his approach has to offer leaders in our times.
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