The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that for a growing number of corporate leaders, chief executive officer is not the last rung on the management ladder any more. The Globe's Tim Kiladze writes that instead, more CEOs announce they are retiring or "stepping down" to become executive chairs, taking on ill-defined roles that permit them to continue overseeing strategy, and sometimes day-to-day operations, even though a new CEO has been appointed. The trend is playing out at institutions of all stripes, from publicly traded companies, to law firms, to private corporations and it is altering succession plans at every size of enterprise imaginable. The trend has also taken hold in the United States. Three years ago executive search firm Spencer Stuart found 130 publicly traded American companies worth at least $500-million (U.S.) had named executive chairs. By December, 2023, that figure had jumped 56 per cent, to 203 executive chairs, including one at Netflix. How the position became so popular, so quickly, is still a bit of a mystery, even to those who study it. One likely reason is that executive chair is a fuzzy role that can mean a lot of things, so it is easy for companies to justify the position.