The Year's Biggest C-Suite Changes | The 25 Most Customer-Centric Companies | Lessons From The 1999 IPO Boom

Plus: Forbes Favorites 2020: The Year’s Best Leadership Stories

So many leadership decisions of 2020 were made in response to transformative events: marketing campaigns, technology implementations, even staffing moves.

New vaccines promise hope in 2021, and with that hope, leadership decisions that guide companies into a new era. C-suite leaders now have a blank slate before them.

A year from now, we will know how 2021 was defined. Until then, we will track executives’ hits and misses along the way, noting the trends that evolve and the innovation that guides business forward.

Let’s make it a happy new year!

Comings & Goings

The economy might have slowed down in 2020, but turnover in the C-suite did not. From Delta to Macy’s to AMC, these were the most significant CFO departures of the year.

Leadership & Strategy

A LinkedIn analysis of nearly 100,000 C-suite appointments this past year finds that despite an overall slowdown in C-level hiring, the composition of executive teams is rapidly changing. From the growing ubiquity of diversity officers to new positions oriented around growth, 2020 fundamentally reshaped the C-suite.

The widespread adoption of remote work this year made hiring particularly difficult (goodbye, face-to-face interviews, and hello, Zoom fatigue). These were the three areas where hiring managers came up short.

Board rooms, traditionally stodgy and conservative, saw massive changes in 2020. From new diversity mandates to activist postures, these are the year’s biggest changes in corporate governance.

By The Numbers

450

The number of IPOs in 2020.

Despite the anemic pandemic economy, 2020 hosted an impressive number of IPOs, rivaling only the 1999 IPO boom. Are the lessons of 1999 applicable today?

Reputation & Risk

As 2020 fades into the rearview mirror, it’s worth reflecting on how leaders took on the year’s myriad challenges. In a year of bad news, leaders across the board stepped up and displayed warmth and humanity, even as work became more distant and tech-oriented.

Influencers have become increasingly unavoidable on social media, and increasingly central to businesses’ marketing plans. Here’s how to get the best return on your influencer marketing partnerships going into 2021.

As millions of Americans fell into financial hardship, many companies sought to put people before profits. Here are 25 of the most customer-centric companies that stepped up during the coronavirus pandemic.

The CxO Profile

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