CEO departures just hit a nine-year low. And most people are reading that as good news. Stability. Boards holding steady. Leaders staying the course.
I read it differently. And I want to tell you why.
But first, here are the numbers, because they matter. Russell Reynolds published its Global CEO Turnover Index on the 8th of October
Now, there are two ways to read this.
One reading, and plenty of smart people hold it, is that boards have finally got disciplined. They're planning succession properly, promoting from within, avoiding the chaos of a stranger parachuting in. Stability as a sign of health.
But here's the other reading. The one I keep seeing up close. Fewer CEOs leaving doesn't mean fewer CEOs struggling. It means more of them staying in a seat that has changed around them. And that's a completely different problem from the one boards think they've solved.
Because a lot of this isn't confidence. It's cost.
And plenty of companies can't absorb that right now, so the incumbent stays. Not endorsed. Just cheaper to keep.
Markets are up, which removes the trigger, because nobody on a board wants to argue for upheaval when the share price points up and to the right. So the decision gets deferred another year and called stability.
Here's the part that should make any long-serving leader pause.
When nobody moves, nothing gets reset.
Pressure at the top rarely shows up as a resignation. It shows up as drift. As decisions that take three months instead of three weeks. As a leadership team that has slowly stopped arguing. The company looks calm from the outside while, inside, the leader is running on instincts shaped by a market, a team and a set of pressures that have all moved on.
And that's the real trap of a long tenure.
When you've held the chair for years, the same moves keep getting rewarded. The instincts that worked get reinforced, over and over. But the context that made them work has changed underneath you, without telling you. The results still look fine. So you keep leading the company you joined, not the one you're actually running now.
In other words, staying in the job is not the same as still being the right person for it. Those are two different things. And the gap between them is where good companies stall.
I see this often. A CEO who has, by every external measure, won. And who can feel, privately, that something has gone flat. That they're working harder than ever and it's landing less. They can't name it. And nobody around them will, because from the outside, low turnover looks like strength.
So whichever way the data gets read, the question for the person in the seat is the same. And almost nobody asks it out loud.
If you're not going anywhere, the question was never whether you can hold the job.
It's who you need to become inside it.
Andrea
One idea a week on how top CEOs lead when the stakes are high, from inside rooms most people never enter. Free, and you can leave any time.