After shaking up Frontier Communications' management and board in 2004, Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter decided in 2006 to create an executive mentoring program that syncs up top management team members with a board member to provide "informal coaching."
The idea of aligning top management with board members is aimed at having a succession plan in place because board directors get to evaluate possible CEO candidates. Last year, Wilderotter invited another four members of management to join the mentoring program.
While creating a succession plan won't sit well with other CEOs who may feel threatened by someone who thinks they could do the job better than them, it appears that Frontier could be onto something. According to a poll conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Corporate Board Member magazine, a poll of 1,021 company directors revealed that almost four in 10 directors did not like their company's management transition planning strategy.
For more:
- Wall Street Journal has this article