An external new CEO or promotion for someone
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One of the most important decisions that your company will make is who should be CEO. Basically you have two options, you can promote somebody from within the company to the job or you can hire somebody from outside. There are advantages and disadvantages to both so you will need to consider these when you are making your decision.
The biggest pro in favour of hiring somebody from outside the company to be the new CEO is that you will have a much larger number of candidates to choose from. This means that there is a pretty good chance that you will be able to find somebody more qualified than if you promoted from with in. This is especially true if you are looking for an experienced CEO, since a company can only have one there is little chance that you will already employ somebody with direct experience of being a CEO.
The other big pro of hiring from outside of the company is that the new person will bring a fresh perspective when they look at the way that you do things. Since he will not have been involved in the decisions about how the company operated in the past it will be far easier to make changes than it would be for somebody who has been working there for years. In addition the experience that the new CEO gained working at other places will mean that he has seen how other companies operate and will be able to bring fresh ideas.
Of course a CEO who can make changes cuts both ways and this can be a con for hiring externally. There may well be good reasons that things are done the way that they are which the new CEO may not realize. There is also the fact that employees often find it difficult to adapt to changes, it may be that you are better off not making them if it hurts the productivity of the people who work for the company. There is something to be said for maintaining a stable environment and this is done best by promoting somebody from within.
The other big reason that you may not want to hire an external CEO is the message that it sends to your employees. You are basically telling them that none of them were good enough to be worthy of a promotion to the top job. This is something that will trickle all the way down the company, people expect to be able to get promoted at work. When you hire from outside the company you are limiting the opportunity that people have to get ahead. The result is that your best employees are likely to leave to go work someplace where they do have promotion opportunities.