Blackstone’s CEO search process for its 250 companies takes place over 90 days, with dozens of interviews and billions on the line. At the Fortune COO Summit, Senior managing director Courtney Della Cava explained the qualities she looks for in new CEOs.
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00:00At the individual, we literally, with each investment, we kind of start with a blank slate and say,
00:05what does that CEO need to do to be successful? And it's right with that investment thesis.
00:09And there's some truths in all of it. Can they articulate the strategy, create a vision and
00:15strategy? Can they galvanize the team, win hearts and minds? Can they allocate resources? Can they
00:20communicate? So there's some truths we need, but really specific as we step back, and this is
00:25probably true for all of your roles, which is what uniquely does that CEO need to do to be
00:31successful and execute the investment thesis and get the realized returns we want. The challenge for
00:36Howard and everyone in our world is we try to create long-term value in a short-term horizon.
00:42So accelerated value creation, it is not easy. It's not easy for Howard. It's not easy for anyone
00:47on the team. And so we need folks who are resilient. We need folks who cognitively can keep up. Really
00:54importantly, one of the biggest, we need folks who can communicate with us and not just good news,
00:59right? We want folks who are coming to us with questions. We always say we are partners to
01:02leverage, not stakeholders to manage.