---
title: "When the CEO Becomes Board Ch… | Insights — Lyoen & Partners"
url: https://lyoenandpartners.com/insights/when-the-ceo-becomes-board-chair
description: "Harvard Business Review (Oct 27, 2025) by David Gau and Carter Cast examines the increasingly common CEO-to-board-chair transition. Citing a 2023 Spencer…"
lang: en-US
---

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Monday, October 27, 2025succession

# When the CEO Becomes Board Chair

Harvard Business Review (Oct 27, 2025) by David Gau and Carter Cast examines the increasingly common CEO-to-board-chair transition. Citing a 2023 Spencer Stuart study, the authors note that more than 40% of outgoing S&P 500 CEOs assumed board chair roles within a year of stepping down, and lay out the governance hazards that follow — including blurred lines between strategy oversight and operational direction-setting and a chilled successor relationship. For SEA mid-market family-business boards where the outgoing CEO routinely becomes chair, the article supplies a vocabulary for naming the transition risk explicitly.

Sources

Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2025/10/when-the-ceo-becomes-board-chair)

Topic: Boardroom Performance: https://lyoenandpartners.com/insights/topic/boardroom-performance

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