YouSaid · the spoken record

James Citrin

lines on the record: 93
first: 2019-02-04
most recent: 2019-02-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, Disney wasn't the CEO. That was a COO, and Michael Winklovich. But at the CEO level, there were a few of these high-profile ones, and the boards did truly get better at looking at this two, three, four years in advance. And so that pendulum swung to succession planning and promotion from within. And that's a place where Spencer Stewart and our competitors also do that work, advise boards, assess the internals, develop the specs.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After Sarbanes-Oxley, that started to change. And so in 2004, when we started measuring at Spencer Stewart and our CEO practice, we study every single CEO transition. We do a case study, whether we're involved or not, and we do statistics about what works insiders versus outsiders first time versus experience, ages and backgrounds, et cetera. But in any case, back then, one-third was outside, two-thirds were inside. Almost on a straight line basis over the ensuing 13 years, that shift went to 90% insiders and only 10% outsiders. And so from one-third, two-thirds to”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely So, in 2004, just to give you a couple of statistics. So, in 2004, the mix at the SP 500 level in the United States, there were about two-thirds of CEO appointments were promoted from within and one-third were recruited from outside. And years ago, again, when I started the way most boards thought about CEO appointments was, oh, we have the person usually, by the way, designated by the incumbent CEO, which usually back at the time was usually a guy. And he would say, Here's my successor and the boards would do that. And usually was the guy.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. That's when you're doing promoting from within. I do want to come back to that because that is one of the big trends to talk about. But in any case, if you think about the intersection of capability, credibility, and attractability in that little intersection, that's where the magic needs to happen. And that's where you can find the right people, but it's not a lot of people in these important big high-level jobs.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everyone now, especially then when someone gets announced, they'll Google that person, they'll call their friends, they'll look on Glassdoor, they'll say, okay, who is this person all about? Is she great and someone to do inspired by or not? So that's one of the criterion that boards or hiring managers always say, will he or she be credible and retain our team? But then the third is attractability. When you're doing recruiting, you actually need to find a person who will do the job. When you're doing succession planning, which is a big part of our Spencer Stewart work, we do a lot of leadership advisory work, succession planning, assessment, and all of that.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think about a Venn diagram with three intersecting circles, and this to me simplifies kind of the whole recruiting proposition. In one circle, there's capability. What is needed in the job? What is someone's ability to actually do that? How much is their experience before? Train them to do that. So capability, that's one thing. Number two is credibility. And this goes back to the question about in tech, is tech different?”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“eBay had a whole bunch as well. And so sometimes those organizations that have had to fight a little bit more were great, but then things didn't go quite well. They have to really be that kind of ingenuity. But just at a principal level, what I always find about recruiting, and this is just sort of a lesson learned for anybody listening, if you're ever thinking about your own career getting a job, or if you're on a board or if you're hiring people, it's the same thing on both sides, which is”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of executives moving into big jobs. It is interesting. Yahoo has Dinesh, the CE of One Kings Lane. There are a number that were...”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dan Rosenswager. Dan Rosenswagen, CEO of Chegg, who's done a great job building that to a $3.5 billion public company. Hillary Schneider. Suddecker wasn't CEO following”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. I mean, it's interesting. If you look just on that point, if you actually look at the organizations that have spawned a lot of great tech CEOs, Yahoo actually has a lot out there. It's amazing. And eBay has some of the greatest.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or even to this day, you know, how much is it their own leadership, ingenuity, and cleverness versus just being great in a proven business model? A lot of people say it about Google.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of the most amazing leaders within those companies, but there are also questions about are they just the right place at the right time? And someone who comes in and they're hardworking, bright young person.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are so many topics and questions within that statement. I think that the companies that you mention have been the magnet for some of the most incredible talent into that sector years ago. Companies like Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, GE had the opportunity to attract the world's best talent. But over the last certainly 10 years, a lot of those companies have been supplanted by or certainly competitive by those great companies that you mentioned. very strong sense within technology that you get it or you don't get it and there's a credibility that comes with being associated with these great brands or with the kinds of education and technology education whether it's Stanford or Caltech or Indian Institute of Technology that gets people into that industry. Where we are today there are”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back with James Citron. He's the leader of Spencer Stewart's CEO Practice. We're talking about, he's been very involved in a lot of big tech CEO placements. Talk a little bit about where we are now, because there's sort of a really interesting shift going on among talent in Silicon Valley of, you know, talent's always been in charge in Silicon Valley pretty much because of the need for not just engineers, but everybody, that it's been one of these areas that's been where the employees have a lot of sway. Is that still the case from your perspective? I mean, you look at Google, the Google employees and people like that. What is the landscape now? Because I see more founders sort of moving to the side. You see Sachinadella was not a founder. He was an early employee. But the company's shifting into a different place, perhaps you don't think that, but I'm just curious how you look at where we are. We have Sundar Pachai at Google. We've got, we still got Reed Hastings, obviously, at Netflix and Jeff.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It used to be, I mean, back in 2004 when Michael Eisner was being succeeded at Disney, to me that at the time, that was the be all and end all CEO succession process. And that Bob Eiger came in. It's done the most incredible job. That was the be all and end all. Today, you know, it's the big tech companies that are more the be-all and end-all. And you just look at that by terms of market cap.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you can say it It is the younger industry. The centrality of tech, the economy now is greater than it's ever been. And as you and I have chatted about and you've talked about with your other guests, the role of tech in society is changing and is under a lot of pressure and that's where's it going. That's one of the things we'll talk about. I think that 15, 20 years ago, it wasn't the center of all the conversations as it has become.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's when there's an early stage company that, and I don't like that parlance. And by the way, I've seen some incredibly inspiring, talented, very young people.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or do look outside the industry. So that engineer versus non engineer is the kind of always the core question in technology. But that's the same thing in financial services. Do you need someone who has managed a balance sheet or do you need someone who understands sales and trading or risk? I just finished working with the board of MetLife and had a wonderful CEO succession there, someone deeply knowledgeable about the insurance industry in retail where we've done the Ralph Lawrence CEO, the Best Buy CEO. The question is, do they need to be a retailer? And within retail, do they need to be a merchant? So these questions of what is most important is Absolutely central to this process, but in technology it's really the typically, is it an engineer? Is it an engineer or not?”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I really do think it's changing. I do think that founder lit companies are their own category, and there's more similarity with a company like Capital One, with Rich Fairbank, is still the founder, and a company that has the tech founder still in place. More similarities there than just in the industry. I think the big question in technology that most people in technology think is unique to technology, but actually is the case in a different way across industries is what is most important. Do we need an engineering technology? Trained product person to be the CEO, or do we need a commercial person?”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At Goldman Sachs talking to them about a bunch of stuff. And one of the things was that these are founder company led companies and stuff like that. You talk a little bit about is it that different in tech versus industries? And then in the next, you're talking about how it's going to change, because I really do think it's changing pretty quickly, it will be changing pretty quickly. But was it different when you're dealing with founder company-led companies where the founders are alive and still very active in these companies? And sometimes the CEO, sometimes not.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, there's Jack. I'm sure you know Along the other. So one grew upon the other, and obviously Marissa Mayer. So when you were started to do this, is it different in tech when you're looking for CEOs or was there, because it had been these are early people. I was just this morning.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. And it doesn't always work. But one of the things that I and Spencer Stewart as a firm were really focused on research and learning. And we're really much a learning organization. But a lot that some I think I can mention in this audience, I've recruited Dan Shulman to PayPal, Devin Wenning to eBay, helped Meg Whitman bring John Donahoe back to eBay back in 2005. I did the CEO process with Board of Twitter that resulted in Jack staying as full-time. Look, there's Jack. And Jack, and also, but also helped recruit Omek Kurdistani as chairman, did the Cisco CEO succession with Chuck Robbins, Pandora most recently a year ago with Roger Lynch, Hulu, the founding CEO of Hulu, Jason Kyler, who I'm sure you know, and many along that lines.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think Jeff, not to speak for him, but he would credit Terry for really moving him and to attack, even though he did Warner Brothers Interactive at the time. In any case, so Terry started. And once that happened, all of a sudden, I got drawn into other tech things. And one thing led to another, and I ended up doing tons of some of the biggest tech CEO and board.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, in that case, this is again, this is now 18 years ago, and there was an existential question that Yahoo had in many companies have it, whether it's in tech or media or retail for that matter of what's kind of the essence. And they had a view that Yahoo should become more of a media company. Therefore needed a media leader, what would the right? And we had a number of media CEOs. We did test that hypothesis with also having a big software CEO as candidate back in the day. But Terry was brilliant and he, while he wasn't tech, he had great access to advisors. Jeff Wiener was on his team at Warner Brothers, and Jeff helped advise him getting smart in that process. He was a catabate.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was there at the time? He was a COO. Exactly. I know Terry really well. He was one of my investors, actually. Can you talk about when you were doing that, you were looking for a media person who hadn't been in tech, right? And can you talk about that in that case?”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Jeff had just left Oh, sorry, sorry. Jeff, no, Jeff was there. Jeff was there at the time. Exactly. He was a COO. Exactly. So that's where this is going. They asked me to, to my surprise, to do the CEO search in 2001. And the reason why they came to me, because I wasn't like a fixture in Silicon Valley. They knew I had media. And they had a theory at the time that Yahoo should become more of a media company. And then I did the first of two, as you well know, CEO searches at Yahoo, one in 2001, recruited Terry Semmel, who had just left Warner Bros. as the co-chairman and CEO.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who at the time was the CEO of Yahoo? And later after that book came out, he asked me to come out to Sunnyvale and spend some time with him. And when I went out there with a partner of mine, assuming it would be just an hour kind of conversation, he invited me to spend the whole day with him and Jerry Yang. And at the end, and Mike Moritz, the famous”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we did all sorts of analysis, shareholder performance, we did a Gallup survey. I almost admired. We did all sorts of other things. And in general, we got it right of some of those 50. And these were people like Howard Schultz at Starbucks, Michael Dell, Michael Eisner at the time. Not so good in the over time, many were really there. So the lessons learned were about thought leadership and people leadership. What I learned back then, and I see this day in and out, is that the leadership styles can be from introverted to extroverted. That's the style is not the point. Leadership is situational in style, but the important things are about values, about thought leadership, and people leadership. And we come back to that. But anyway, the point is that I did a follow-up book in 2001 on more digital leadership. And one of the people that I got to know in”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, some of the lessons were super timeless to this day about thought leadership, people leadership, values leadership, and it's kind of funny. So there was 50 lessons from the top, there were the 50, quote, best business leaders in America.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did a lot of publishing. And in the mid 90s, as publishers started going to the intranet and creating interactive, I did that. And here are this very, very interesting here. So in the year 2001, the year 2001, Yahoo had a market cap before the first crash of over $100 billion. And I'd written, one of the things I learned at McKinsey was the importance of research and intellectual capital. So I wrote a book back in 1998 called Lessons From the Top. It analyzed the best CEOs in America, and then I had the idea to go out, and just like you, interview them, get to know them, and try and draw lessons learned for great leadership. And so I did that, and that book came out and was really a big success. And I learned a lot of... What were the last...”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we are retained by companies to find executives for needs. And so it happens all the time now. A company needs a chief financial officer. The chief financial officer retired and you diagnose what it needs and you interview the management team. You develop a position specification and then you go out, do research and try and find the very best people to do it. And you don't always get to work on the highest profile things you start, like everybody you start kind of in the opportunities you're given and over the last 25 years, I've worked my way up and working with teams with great global firm and I've worked on over 700 assignments over these 25 years. But to your question of how I got into tech, I knew tech a little bit, but not that well. You're doing media for the most part. Right. I came in really doing media.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I started as a consultant, which is what I am today, a consultant in Spencer Stewart, or a global leadership advisor and executive recruiting firm. Go into a company.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The reason was it was like all the great parts of McKinsey and strategy consulting without a lot of the bad. And what I realized was the things I loved at McKinsey was working with clients. I loved building the teams. I actually had always a good sense for people and I was always good at the communications side. And I understood the problems, but rather than solving them yourself, finding someone else. And it was actually a really interesting moment, again, way before many of your listeners sort of realized, but this was at the time when Spencer Stewart recruited Luke Erstner from RJR Nabisco to IBM and turned around IBM. That was 1993, 1994. And so literally 25 years ago, this month I went and started at Spencer Stewart, started in media recruiting, doing medium level things.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally, totally. But it was great because I called a friend of mine who was at Spencer Stewart asking her for some advice because I just wasn't happy. I wasn't really feeling successful. And she said, have you ever thought about our business? And I was like, your business? She said, sure, the executive recruiting business. I think you'd really be good at it and you'd enjoy it. And I was like, she said.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And doing a lot of research, I ended up thinking that the right way to go was basically into CD-ROMs when other companies were investing and figuring out the internet. I totally missed that. So it was never a great strategist, certainly in a corporate plan. CD-ROMs. CD-ROMs.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I really did not like it. And a year. Because actually it was a very much of a direct marketing company. And actually this is quite funny for your audience. One of the tasks that I had in 1993 was to develop the electronic publishing strategy for readers digest.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Strategy consulting to publishing to television cable and all the like. Guess 30 years the statute of limitations can be off because McKinsey never talks about the clients, but like time, Inc. and I worked in the Paris office for a big. French media company back then, and I had the idea that I wanted to go into media. And so in 1992, I ended up going to then a prominent global company, Readers Digest Association as director of global strategic planning.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I ended up going to McKinsey in 1987, spent five years in really, really enjoyed it, and learned a lot and did some media work at McKinsey and Love fell in love with media.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Actually, the original thought was I like relationships, I liked advising people, and I thought that doing it at Goldman would be a great place, but I actually didn't like investing and all this stuff.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the things at HBS, I was really good at interviewing. I was really good at seeing what companies that were recruiting wanted and getting job offers. I ended up coming out in 1986 and went to Goldman Sachs and Private Wealth Management, didn't really like it. But one of the companies that I got.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, I went to Vassar College and I went. Graduated in 81 and went to Wall Street as an analyst. At Morgan Stanley went back to Harvard Business School and I had this curious situation.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm hoping you'll tell some stories, but I don't know if you will. Let's start talking a little bit about your career. I like to have people's background of how you got to what you've done and especially how you got to the tech sector and how you moved into that area. You all have done like a lot of the major placements of major executives. So talk a little bit about how you got where you got.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hi, I'm Kara Swisher, editor-at-large of Recode. You may know me as someone who liked the idea of being CEO headhunter better than when I thought it meant literally hunting CEOs, but in my spare time I talk tech and you're listening to recode decode from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today in the red chair is James Citroen, someone I've known but not known for a long time, the leader of Spencer Stewart's CEO practice. It's a global executive recruiting firm that has worked with companies like SurveyMonkey, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo, everybody. I don't think there's anyone, James hasn't recruited in Silicon Valley. He's at the center of a lot of things, but also behind the scenes. He is the author of several books, most recently The Career Playbook James Welcome to Recode Decode. I'm so excited to get you here.”
2019-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Spencer Stuart executive recruiter James Citrin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT