What did Target, Starbucks, and Nike have in common barely a year ago? All three consumer icons had freshly announced new CEOs, which were wrongly greeted with hasty skepticism from analysts. Target’s Michael Fiddelke was scoffed at as an uninspired insider; Nike’s Elliott Hill was underestimated as a nostalgia hire, unable to stem Nike’s loss of market share, while questions abounded over whether Brian Niccol could actually turn around Starbucks amidst pervasive in-store service struggles, despite his sterling record at Chipotle.
We saw it differently. At the time of their appointments, we vocally and presciently touted all three new CEOs as the right person for the job at the right time, while other analysts rolled their eyes. Unlike the frequent, sometime successful model of the messianic hiring of industry outsiders as turnaround tians, these new CEOs hit the ground running as each had decades of experience in their sectors with glowing track records, priceless relationships, and balanced expertise across marketing, finance, strategy, and operations,.
