I never thought of myself as a business person or an entrepreneur.

But I was a tough farm girl.

Yeah, I had an enormous thirst to get my hands on it.

I think the board didn't have a stomach for it.

I'm a consummate inside of.

From day one, you are the CEO.

Hey, you.

Yeah, I'm talking to you.

You, for the purposes of this conversation, are on the board of directors of a large publicly traded firm.

And you've just learned that your CEO will be stepping down.

So do you replace them with a company insider or an outsider?

In our last episode, we learned that boards are increasingly picking outsiders in the hope of shaking things up.

You can't blame them.

Just think of all the business school buzzwords about shifting the paradigm

and thinking outside the box, pushing the envelope.

But if what you really care about is the firm's success, rather than just ticking all the boxes on the buzzword menu,

then you'll go with a stable and experienced insider.

That's what the data show.

An objective smart, honest, intelligent insider is generally a much better pick than somebody from the outside.

On today's episode, we will hear from one such insider who's been phenomenally successful.

She runs a huge and hugely visible company, a company whose products you've likely encountered in the last day or two,

if not the last hour or two.

...