美国一部分顶级公司未能进行严格的背景调查，确保CEO候选人是带领公司迎接未来挑战的最佳人选，结果在众目睽睽之下遭遇滑铁卢。上周，雅虎（Yahoo）就尝到了这样的苦果，这家公司的CEO斯科特•汤普森被曝简历造假。

    当初主导此次CEO筛选并最终选定汤普森的雅虎董事帕蒂•哈特已计划退出董事会。对于目前服务于财富500强公司董事会的4,000多名高管或考虑加入这些董事会的人，雅虎事件无疑敲响了警钟。

    如果这些问题在CEO任命前没有浮出水面，结果可能导致这家公司以及来自其他公司、但是服务与这家公司董事会的高管在众目睽睽之下陷入窘境，同时会动摇股东和员工对管理层的信心。学历核查并不难。难的是要从市场领域获得实实在在的数据，确保入选的CEO能胜任这份工作。惠普（Hewlett-Packard）就是一个例子，去年在李艾科的领导下这家公司的市值缩水了40%。最近，惠普一位董事告诉我们，李艾科是被“推销给董事会的”，“这种情况不会再发生了”。

    类似的失误不光出现在雅虎，也出现在摩托罗拉（Motorola）、可口可乐（Coke）和宝洁（Procter & Gamble）等公司中。一旦发现选错人，指责之声便会四起，人们首先就会质问：“为什么我们以前不知道这些情况？”优秀的公司会建立体系，确保能够做到这一点。比如，宝洁第二次就取得了极大的成功，它在组织内部深入挖掘，根据更充分的信息进行筛选，最终选定了雷富礼（A.G. Lafley）。

    很多公司CEO招聘看走眼，最后只能一拍两散，皆因信息不足和过于放权，过于依赖第三方的工作。幸运的是，要改善这个流程有很多工作可以做。

    要弄清候选人能为公司带来什么以及他/她与未来的职责和公司文化是否相符，企业不能停留于粗浅的背景调查。不同于其他高管职位，CEO候选人的背景调查比较特殊，因为很多时候候选人都没有做过CEO。

    下面三种措施可以帮助企业避免雅虎式的困境：

确保董事会的参与

    帕蒂•哈特退出雅虎董事会，凸显了很重要的一点：招聘CEO是董事会的重要职责，因此背景调查应该始于董事、终于董事。即使是与第三方、如猎头公司合作时，董事会也不能完全放手不管。董事们应该核查背景调查，如果他们与证明人有私人关系的话就更是如此。如果董事会打算像很多公司那样，完全依赖第三方进行背景调查，董事们需要确保第三方能获得候选人管理经历的“内部一手资料”。我们看到过太多董事会完全放手的结果。结果并不美妙。

    Some of the best companies in the U.S. have failed, very publicly, to rigorously check references on CEO candidates to ensure that they are the right fit for the company's challenges ahead. Yahoo learned this lesson the hard way last week when it was revealed that their CEO, Scott Thompson, padded his resume.

    Now Yahoo (YHOO) board member Patti Hart, who led the executive search that resulted in Thompson's hiring, plans to step down from the board. For the more than 4,000 executives currently serving on Fortune 500 boards, or considering joining one, these events concerning Yahoo should be a wake-up call.

    When these issues are not surfaced before the CEO is hired, the result can be both public embarrassment – for the company and the executives from other companies that serve on its board – and a jolt to shareholder and employee confidence in leadership. And checking academic pedigrees is the easy part. The more difficult challenge is getting the hard data from the market to ensure that your CEO pick is right for the job. Just look at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), where shareholders were stripped of 40% of their stock value under Leo Apotheker last year. One HP director recently told us that Apotheker had been "sold to the board" and "that won't happen again."

    Similar misfires have happened not only at Yahoo but also at companies like Motorola (MSI), Coke (KO), and Procter & Gamble (PG). When the wrong person is picked, recriminations and questions immediately begin with, "Why didn't we know this before?" The best companies put in place systems to ensure that they do. P&G, for example, was highly successful the next time around because it dug deeper into the organization and based CEO selection on better information, which led to the selection of CEO A.G. Lafley.

    Many companies make a final hiring decision with too little information and too much delegation, and rely too heavily on third parties to get the job done. Fortunately, there is a great deal that can be done to improve the process.

    Companies must go beyond superficial referencing to determine what a candidate can contribute and how he or she aligns with the future imperatives and culture of the company. But unlike referencing for other senior executive positions, referencing for CEO contenders is tricky because in many cases the person up for the job has never been a CEO before.

    Here are three ways in which companies can avoid a Yahoo-like debacle:

Make sure the board is involved

    Patti Hart's departure from Yahoo's board underscores a crucial point: Hiring the CEO goes to the heart of a board's fiduciary duties, so it makes sense that referencing begins and ends with the directors. Even when working with a third party, such as a search firm, boards should never completely hand off the referencing process. Directors should be a check on referencing, especially if they have a personal relationship with a reference. If a board is going to rely on a third party to take care of the referencing process, as many companies do, the directors need to make sure that that group can get the "inside scoop" on how a candidate leads. We've seen the consequences of boards that relinquish control of the referencing process. It's not pretty.

不能停留于常规评估流程

    传统的内部评估流程评价的是候选人的现任职务表现，并不能评估此人是否是块做CEO的好料子。将此作为进入第二轮背景调查的基础，背景调查可以提供更多洞察。2008年，葛兰素史克（GlaxoSmithKline）为CEO让-皮埃尔•加尔尼埃的离职做准备时，就在常规评估流程的基础上增加了14场面谈，面谈者都是与三位内部CEO候选人直接或间接工作过的内部高管，目的是评估候选人是否适合CEO一职。反馈意见通报给加尔尼埃和董事会。现任CEO安德鲁•维迪当时在候选人中并不拔尖，但面谈结果发现相比其他两位竞争者，他是更加合适的候选人。

保密

    我们看到过非常出色的候选人在竞聘消息走漏后决定退出。解决这个问题的一个办法是：在对CEO候选人进行背景调查时，公司可以询问知情的业内人士这位候选人是否适合一个潜在的董事职位，该职位可能需要具备大量的CEO技能，而不是直奔主题，直指CEO职位。

    大多数大公司都会聘请咨询公司，确保能通过背景调查对CEO最终候选人有一个全面的了解。而且，确实，涉及候选人，很多证明人在面对第三方时与与面对董事时的说法并不一致。最近，我们为一家财富500强排名前100的公司物色CEO人选时，该公司董事会就同时采用了两种方式进行背景调查，让其中几位证明人与公司董事和咨询顾问都进行了独立谈话。

    新聘一位CEO总是不可避免地会冒一定的风险。除了即时获取信息，企业还必须将尽可能地掌握候选人的情况视为己任，然后再做出任命决定。只有这样，才能确保任命的重大消息宣布之后不会有令人不快的意外情况发生，也不会出现“真相”曝出时的尴尬。

    Dennis Carey、Melanie Kusin和Jane Stevenson是光辉国际（Korn/Ferry International）的副董事长。

    译者：老榆木

Go beyond the customary assessment process

    The traditional internal assessment process is designed to assess a candidate in his or her current position, not whether the individual is great CEO material. Use that process as an entrée to a second round of references, which will add insights. When GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was planning for the departure of CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier in 2008, it supplemented its customary assessment with 14 interviews with internal executives who had worked directly or indirectly with all three internal CEO candidates. The questions were designed to assess the suitability for the CEO position, and feedback was shared with Garnier and the board. Now-CEO, Andrew Witty, while not the obvious choice at the time, emerged as a much better candidate than his competitors.

Keep it confidential

    We have seen stellar candidates drop out of consideration when their candidacy is made public. One solution to this problem: When referencing for CEO candidates, companies can ask knowledgeable industry insiders to evaluate a candidate for a potential director position, rather than the CEO spot, which encompasses many chief executive skills.

    Most large companies hire consulting firms to make sure they get a complete picture of a CEO finalist through references and, indeed, people offering references will often speak about a candidate differently to a board director than they would to a third party. In a recent CEO search we did for a Fortune 100 company, the board utilized a two-way process for conducting references where several referees spoke independently with both a director and the consultant.

    Hiring a new CEO will inevitably involve an element of risk. With instant access to information, companies must make it their mission to learn everything possible about candidates, before an appointment is made. That's the surest way to avoid unpleasant surprises the day after the big announcement or the pain of having the "real" story dribble out.

    Dennis Carey, Melanie Kusin, and Jane Stevenson are vice chairmen of Korn/Ferry International.