Post by Dylan Jones

Brown-Forman said today that their CEO Lawson Whiting is retiring after nearly 30 years with the company and seven or so as its boss. As usual with these things, the announcement ticks every box the market cares about. He's going, the board's looking for a replacement, and Whiting will stay put until they find someone who they think can turn the business around. The one thing that’s missing is a departure date. I understand why, to some extent. Public companies have to put the news out when they know about it, and if you’re not sure that you’ve got an internal candidate (and the board are clearly not convinced) then you have to bring on a recruiter. Which means telling the whole world before you’re really ready. But an open-ended goodbye is its own headache. Whiting's now a lame duck boss running the place while everyone inside knows that his opinion doesn’t matter quite as much as it used to. They’re more interested in who comes next, or worried that they might not be on the new person’s team sheet. Senior people freshen up their resumes, and new ideas go on hold for the next person. And meanwhile the state of the company is such that they can ill afford to go into cryogenic freezing for the next few months. Time for the internal comms team to roll out some pretty hard hitting campaigns to give people hope. Which in the current environment for alcohol is far from the easiest thing. https://lnkd.in/ek9naXfB