CEO turnover is increasing at an unprecedented pace. In the first four months of 2025 alone, 1,028 CEOs left the company, an increase of 19% year-on-year and a record high. Annual succession rates in the S&P 500 are projected to reach 10% to 13% in 2024, with external hires now accounting for nearly one-third of all appointments.
Boards are making more leadership decisions under greater pressure than at any point in recent history. Systems that move this quickly often require a change in leadership.
The problem is that decision-making is not improving.
More and more patterns are starting to emerge. The board continues to search for the “perfect” CEO. People who can balance transformation, execution, culture and market signals at the same time. If the person is inevitably inadequate, the transition is classified as a failure. But failure rarely falls on the person himself. It exists along with the lens, or board, that selected them. Some boards are trying to solve this problem through co-CEO structures, which in the best cases create extraordinary value. A Harvard University study of 87 co-led publicly traded companies found that the average return was 9.5%, compared with 6.9% for peers with a single CEO. But the fluctuations are just as pronounced as the upward trend. When the structure works, performance improves. Failure accelerates failure.
The difference comes down to a board that understands exactly which behaviors are present at the top and which are missing, and staffs them with discipline to fill the gaps rather than comfort.
What the best and worst combinations actually reveal
The difference between the best-performing co-CEO and the worst co-CEO structure is stark. And it's not explained by industry, timing, or the caliber of the people involved. It comes down to a more fundamental issue. In other words, whether the two leaders really brought different capabilities to the table — not just different skills on their resumes, but different ways of delivering under pressure.
A combination that creates value
Chase Bank (Rockefeller & Aldrich). Although a historical reference, it is still the gold standard. Rockefeller looked beyond the horizon, imagined where world finance was headed, expanded his base, and read market signals that others had not yet noticed. Aldrich has prioritized, managed risk, and navigated complex organizations through difficult execution and made them operational. They didn't divide their work by geography or product. They divided it up by what the organization needed at the top. One person will shape the future, and the other will enable today's machines to reach that future.
Workday (Bousli & Eschenbach). When founder Bhusri stepped back from day-to-day operations, the board resisted obvious moves to hire another visionary. They brought on Eschenbach to ensure operational rigor, prioritize discipline, secure staff for the future, and turn ambition into reality. The CEO remains at the helm, exercising the power to set the pace of change, continually prioritizing a few things that make an impact, and having the organizational grit to retire legacy projects that no longer meet ambitions. Workday remained 19% more stable than its peers in its 2024 revenue outlook, which is volatile in technology. The result is designed, not inherited.
Goldman Sachs (Whitehead & Weinberg). This combination worked for another reason. Both leaders were motivated to step forward into versions of themselves that did not yet exist, to personally embody the transition from lone-wolf banking to a culture of partnership. They didn't just announce a new strategy. Depending on the moment, they appeared from the front, side, or back. While holding firm to the unalienable core of what Goldman stands for, that measurable drive for change helped the cultural change take hold and gave the rest of the organization permission to follow.
Combinations that destroyed value
Salesforce (Benioff & Taylor). They were two extraordinary strategists, both with a great talent for figuring out what was going to happen next. Benioff himself said this co-CEO structure has been “very successful before” at Salesforce, and the appointment formalizes a dynamic that has been building for a year. But no one, neither the leaders nor the board, ensured that operational steering, including day-to-day prioritization and deciding what not to do, was clearly theirs. The result was a creative tension with no resolution. The partnership was dissolved after 14 months, and the stock price has since fluctuated significantly. Redundancy at the top is not resilience. It's a fuse.
Chipotle (Els & Moran). Both leaders were great at imagining the future and expanding their footprint. “Food with Honesty” was a truly compelling vision, and the store grew quickly. But the board did not ensure that either leader was brought to bear on the disciplined, unglamorous work of managing operational risk and executing under pressure. That was a common blind spot. When the E. coli crisis hit in 2015, there was no one at the top who was steering with intuition rather than imagination. Billions of dollars in market capitalization evaporated not because of bad leadership, but because the same strengths emerged twice, leaving critical gaps exposed.
Viacom (Freston & Moonves). Both leaders come to the company with impressive track records, each shaped by years of running their own successful operations. But neither showed any desire to venture into truly new ways of working together. In public, this structure appeared unified. In reality, each person continued to lead based on the assumptions and work rhythms of their previous role. The organization experienced this not as dual leadership, but as two competing centers of gravity, forcing teams to choose sides. Ultimately, the board split the company to resolve tensions. Lessons are not personal. It's a structural thing. No reporting function can make up for it if those at the top are not willing to embody a common future and visibly evolve the way they lead.
Abilities and Behaviors: Distinction boards continue to be missing.
The pattern in these cases is consistent. There was a clear differentiation between the combinations that created value. Each leader brought a truly different way of operating, and the board understood which needs each leader served for the organization. Unsuccessful pairs had areas that needed contrast overlapping, or gaps that needed coverage.
Some might call this the stability fallacy, the assumption that naming a co-CEO guarantees continuity. In reality, it only works if the board defines exactly what behaviors need to be present. Who is shaping the long-term direction? Who is expanding the ecosystem and reading signals beyond quarterly data? Who is in charge of making the difficult operational choices? These three demands can be broken down. But the fourth. You cannot embody the future your organization is building. Both leaders must show up for it or the culture beneath them will collapse.
Exemplifying is not a soft skill, nor is it charisma. It is the willingness to move forward and transform, not theoretically but visibly, and to forget what led to success in the previous chapter. Lead from the front, side, or back depending on the needs of the moment. And all of this must be done without losing the inalienable core: the identity and organizational DNA that cannot be replaced in the name of reinvention. Distinctive, transferable, and continuous growth are also the behaviors that behavioral committees are least able to assess on their own, and this is precisely where an independent, behaviorally accurate lens changes outcomes.
And this is not limited to co-CEO structures. The same diagnostic gap appears every time a CEO changes. According to a study by Conference Board and Heidrick & Struggles, 42% of S&P 500 companies that will change CEOs in 2024 will be in the bottom quartile of CEOs, up from 30% in 2017. Meanwhile, the number of “boomerang CEOs” — former leaders reappointed by boards lacking successors in an attempt to restore the body and mind of their companies — reached a 10-year high in 2024-2025. For second-term CEOs, shareholder returns are significantly lower. Boards are screening credentials and proficiency when they need to audit specific behaviors that are lacking in their organizations.
what needs to change
Boards that are unable to evolve their own lenses will continue to cycle between leaders. The following transitions occur every four years: Look for the “right person” again. We will once again explain to shareholders why this time is different. Before a board can staff up for a new era, the board itself must be willing to step into the new era. It means questioning the assumption that the “hero CEO” is the only viable model. That means being rigorous about the CEO's as well as the board's own blind spots. If a board cannot materialize the change it demands, it cannot recognize the ability of other boards to do so.
Let's move from authentication information to action. A standard executive search asks, “Does this person have financial acumen?” Do they know our industry? Those questions are necessary but insufficient. The questions that predict success are different. Who is at the top spotting disruption and envisioning what the organization should become before there is consensus? Who is reading the signals beneath the rhetoric and expanding the ecosystem? Who is leading the difficult operational choices that move the organization from ambition to execution? And who is willing to personally embody the transformation to forget the past and step into the next version of themselves?
Boards that are unable to embody change themselves, to challenge their inherited assumptions, to know what to protect and what to challenge, will have a hard time recognizing the capabilities of other boards.
Activist investors are no longer simply replacing underperforming CEOs. They are replacing the boards that appointed them. So the central question is no longer whether there is the right leader at the top of the board, but whether there is a lens on the board to recognize.
