CEO Succession Assessments

Ensuring the Future of Your Corporation

The pressures CEOs face—increased competition, rapidly changing technology, globalization, shareholder expectations—are immense. The failure rate is alarmingly high. A CEO creates impact. Successful ones delight and impress a range of stakeholders;  while a poor fit comes at great cost—decline of shareholder value, reduced customer confidence and loss of key talent.

Who you choose to appoint will have major consequences. It pays to know all you can before making the decision. PDI can help.

Find the Best CEO for Your Organization with PDI’s CEO Assessments

With PDI’s Succession Assessments, you'll: 

  • Gain the most accurate and independent view possible of candidates’ capabilities, strengths and risk factors.

  • Predict the success of your new CEO.

  • Increase the confidence in your decision.

Appropriate for:

  • Understanding the suitability of internal/external candidates for immediate need

  • Reviewing readiness of internal executives with CEO potential

  • Accelerating development of internal executives being groomed for the top

To begin, a PDI consultant works with your Board and/or current CEO to understand your company's current and future challenges, pivotal long-term strategic issues, specific criteria for success and your goals for the process. The process itself consists of:

  • An in-depth interview—to understand the candidate’s unique experience, accomplishments, style, and motivations.

  • Several standardized inventories—to gain insight into the person’s personality attributes that impact leadership style, as well as aptitude for higher-level strategic reasoning, complex problem solving, and business judgment.

  • Challenging live-person business simulations—these immerse candidates into the CEO role of a fictitious Global 1000 company for a day. PDI observes first-hand how effectively they gain credibility with very demanding stakeholders, create a high performance culture and management team, ensure the company’s financial health, drive execution of results across various business models and provide an integrated vision and strategic direction for the enterprise.

The Board and/or current CEO receive:

  • Immediate summary feedback the day after the assessment is complete.

  • A comprehensive written report detailing a candidate’s fit with the challenges of the position, ratings on a set of CEO competencies and recommendations.

  • Comparative feedback on several candidates.

  • A review session to ensure full understanding of the results, integration with other information, and implications for readiness, fit, and future performance in the CEO role

    role.