The CEO's Boss

Dr. Klepper joined Columbia Business School in 1996 after over thirty years as a general manager in higher education. He is a management professor who teaches Executive Leadership in the EMBA program and serves as the Faculty Director of the partnership with the Financial Times/Outstanding Directors Exchange on corporate governance. He also serves as Academic Director of the Executive Education program. Dr. Klepper received his Ph.D. from St. Louis University in 1975.William M. Klepper is a management professor at Columbia Business School. His scholarship and teaching focus on executive leadership and corporate governance. He has worked with a number of major corporations in custom programs and has served as vice president of the College of New Jersey, president of his school board, president of his county legislature, and mayor of his township.

The CEO's Boss serves up a wealth of practical, hands-on recommendations to build a productive partnership and a plan of action for a variety of businesses and settings.... For anyone who wants to take board evaluation, leadership structure, and dynamics to the next level, The CEO's Boss is inspired reading and will provide impetus for discussion.

The CEO's Boss is a must-read for anyone who looks to be taking the highest position in a company.

Michael E. Raynor, author of The Strategy Paradox and coauthor of The Innovator's Solution:
Too many researchers forget that we have as much—or more—to learn from failure as we do from success. By examining transitions that have worked and ones that haven't, William M. Klepper has given us new perspective on how boards can work with CEOs while still holding them accountable. This work is a much-needed addition to the canon of board-level best practices.

Michael Useem, professor of management, Wharton School, and coauthor of Boards That Lead:
Everybody needs a superior, even the company CEO, and governing boards have increasingly answered the call. In doing so, they have added plenty “tough love” to the executive suite, as William Klepper has so well chronicled in The CEO's Boss, with rich accounts of the partnerships, sometimes flawed, between bosses and boards from BP and Lehman to Hewlett-Packard and Wells Fargo.