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. How the position "executive chair" became so popular, so quickly, is still a bit of a mystery, even to those who study it. Sometimes the title is bestowed on a departing CEO who has agreed to help with the transition to a new leader -- but only for a fixed time period, maybe one to two years. This played out at Canadian mining giant Teck Resources in 2022, when long-time CEO Don Lindsay "retired" after 17 years, only to be named executive vice-chair for another year while Jonathan Price, an outsider hired in 2020, became comfortable in the CEO role.