Stephen Miles is a Vice Chairman of Heidrick & Struggles. He runs Leadership Advisory Services within the Leadership Consulting Practice and oversees the firm’s worldwide executive assessment/succession planning activities. He is also a key member of Heidrick & Struggles’ CEO & Board Practice. With more than 15 years of experience in assessment, top-level succession planning, organizational effectiveness and strategy consulting, Stephen specializes in CEO succession and has partnered with numerous boards of global Fortune 500 companies to ensure that a successful leadership selection and transition occurs. He also has led many chairman successions and board effectiveness reviews, partnering with boards of directors to help them with their overall effectiveness, committee effectiveness and individual director effectiveness. Additionally, he is a recognized expert on the role of the chief operating officer, and has consulted numerous companies on the establishment and the effectiveness of the position and supporting the transition from COO to effective CEO.

Stephen is a coach to many CEOs and COOs around the world. He has built the practice’s coaching expertise by focusing on high-performance leadership competencies with a heavy emphasis on the business and cultural context. Stephen works extensively internationally, and his clients cut across all industry sectors.

Prior to joining Heidrick & Struggles, Stephen held various positions at Andersen Consulting.

Stephen is author and co-editor of the best-selling business book Leaders Talk Leadership. He also co-authored Riding Shotgun: The Role of the Chief Operating Officer, as well as the cover article in the May 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review* on the same topic. Stephen also co-authored the feature article in the April 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review titled: "The Leadership Team—Complementary Strengths or Conflicting Agendas? Great top teams work to their members’ disparate strengths—but those differences can cause discord, too, especially during succession". His third book, Your Career Game: How Game Theory Can Help You Achieve Your Professional Goals, was released in April 2010 (Stanford University Press) and he has also recently completed a chapter on "Assessing the Leader" for Linkage Inc.’s Best Practices in Leadership Development Handbook 2nd edition; Wiley 2009. Stephen is the author of the Stanford Graduate School of Business case study entitled “Multimillionaire Matchmaker: An Inside Look at CEO Succession Planning.” Stephen has also been featured in Forbes, BusinessWeek, Boardroom Intelligence, Strategy + Business, WSJ/MIT, Consulting Magazine, MIT Sloan, Ivey Business Journal, and CEO Magazine. He is a frequent speaker on the topics of CEO succession, coaching C-level executives, talent management and complementary leadership at the top (high performance teams).

Stephen is a member of the Heidrick & Struggles’ Management Committee. He is an independent director for Overlay.TV and DNA13, and an advisory board member at Rypple and The Pythian Group. He has lived in Kenya, South Africa, Iraq, Argentina and Canada.

* “Second in Command: The Misunderstood Role of the COO” was a McKinsey Award finalist for the best article in Harvard Business Review in 2006.

Thought Leadership
articles published here with permission

Directorship

• Memo to the Chairman: How to Interview Your Next CEO
• Creating CEO Succession Processes

Forbes

• Advice To A New CEO: How To Handle Your Board
• Business Decisions Are Like Golf Decisions
• How the SEC Just Changed Succession Planning: Part 1
• Succession Planning: How To Do It Right
• Succession Planning: How Everyone Does It Wrong
• Best Practices In Succession Planning

Harvard Business Review

• The Leadership Team: Complementary Strengths Or Conflicting Agendas

Outlook

• Mastering the Move from COO to CEO
  This article originally appeared in the June 2010 issue of Outlook, an Accenture publication. Copyright 2010 Accenture. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Stephen holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s of business administration (summa cum laude), both from Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. He also holds a master’s degree in psychology (summa cum laude) from the University of Victoria.