CEOs Who Return. Seeking the Triumphant

In the New Yorker, featuring CEO  A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble.   A common discussion these days in former employee groups.

" ... How could someone who, according to Fortune, was known as “an all-time C.E.O. hero” end up being just O.K.? Well, if commentators had looked at the track record of returning C.E.O.s—boomerang C.E.O.s, as they’re sometimes called—that’s precisely what they’d have predicted. A 2014 study found that profitability at companies run by boomerang C.E.O.s fell slightly, and an earlier study detected no significant difference in long-term performance between firms that reappointed a former C.E.O. and ones that hired someone new. We like triumphant comeback narratives—Jobs and, to a lesser extent, Howard Schultz, at Starbucks. But history tells us that Lafley’s rather ordinary second tour of duty is the way most of these stories end. ... "