Mattel announced on 30 September that Ynon Kreiz would step down as chairman and chief executive after eight years, leaving for a senior leadership position at another public company. His replacement is Roger Lynch, who becomes chairman on 2 October and chief executive on or before 2 November.
Lynch had been on Mattel’s board since 2018, and most recently served as its independent lead director. He was also, until that morning, the chief executive of Condé Nast.
Mattel described the appointment as following a comprehensive succession planning process. That phrase is usually boilerplate. Here it describes something that actually happened over eight years.
The man selected to run the company had sat in every board meeting for the entire tenure of the person he is replacing. He knows the balance sheet, the brand portfolio, the investor relations and the arguments that have already been had, because he was present for all of them. The company has also had time to watch him work, not in interviews but in the one setting where directors genuinely reveal themselves, which is a difficult meeting.
The cost of that approach is visible on the other side of the transaction. Condé Nast lost its chief executive without notice on the same morning. Lynch sent a memo describing it as a bittersweet and difficult decision, and the board appointed its lead independent director, Mike Perlis, as interim while it searches for a permanent successor. Lynch remains on the Condé Nast board.
By his own account his seven and a half years there produced commerce revenue growth of 170 per cent since 2020, digital subscriptions up 155 per cent, American tentpole events up ninefold, global editorial leadership established across Vogue, GQ, Architectural Digest and Condé Nast Traveller, and a return to profitability through one of the hardest periods media has had.
Mattel’s shares fell about 3 per cent on the announcement, and the context includes investor pressure, with Southeastern Asset Management having called earlier in the year for the company to explore strategic options.
The transferable lesson has nothing to do with scale.
Most owners looking for a successor start with an empty chair and a search. The better position is to have spent years with people around the business in a capacity short of running it: a non-executive, an advisor, a senior manager given real board exposure, a trusted outsider who attends the quarterly review. None of those arrangements is expensive. All of them produce the same asset, which is a shortlist of people who already understand the company and whom the company has already seen under pressure.
The second observation is about symmetry. Both companies in this story needed an interim chief executive at short notice, and both had one, because both had a lead independent director who knew the business. One structure solved the problem twice in a single morning.
Mattel ran a process and arrived at a man who had been sitting at its own table for eight years.
That is what a succession plan looks like when it works.
