This is a special episode for me because it’s about Makers, the business I founded and led as CEO until Claudia Harris took over from me in 2020.
As I said in the episode, it’s about our company and our transition. I might have founded the company, but Claudia took it to a new level since she took over as CEO.
Claudia joined as a chair back in 2017, but when we first met, she wasn’t looking for a chair role, and I wasn’t planning to step down as CEO. Yet, two years into her role as a chair, we started discussing the possibility of a CEO change. The company needed a different set of skills for its next stage of growth, and I was keen to move on for personal reasons.
Claudia would make a great scale-up CEO, but what were the chances? At the time, she was CEO of a different business. Plus, as an ex-partner at McKinsey with experience working at high levels of government, she had a wide choice of career options. So I had to pinch myself when I managed to persuade her to take over Makers.
In this episode, we discuss how we navigated our CEO transition, the first big crisis after she took over, and the lessons we learned from the experience.
This CEO transition was, in fact, the reason why I later wrote a book on CEO transitions (buy it on Amazon) and started working with other founders as a coach. It’s such a consequential and delicate process that it requires careful planning. Yet, very few founders and boards start planning it well in advance.
Enjoy the conversation!
Timestamps
Clickable on YouTube.
00:00 Introduction
01:47 What is Makers?
03:58 From Chairman to CEO of Makers
06:36 The Initial Conversations About Succession
11:13 The Decision to Change the CEO
18:35 Navigating the Pandemic
22:59 The Handover Process
31:12 First Crisis as the New CEO
35:11 Biggest Lessons
39:25 Final Reflections
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