Patrick Doyle's announcement about handing off the chief's job at Domino's is about as close as you can get to a mic drop for a CEO.
He's going out on top after just having helped his company reach the apex of its industry, cementing his legacy. His settling on the next CEO appears to be part of an effective succession plan with the Domino's board. And Doyle is young enough, at 54 years old, both to take some time off and then to get back into the scrum of business, if he wants to -- likely with a slew of options.
Surely another successful element of Doyle's exit announcement is that it took outsiders -- and presumably many insiders -- by surprise. And yet it wasn't the kind of unforeseen goodbye that is so common lately, soiled by poor performance or other negatives like those at some industry rivals. His humility was one element. And it was just time -- or will be, on June 30.
"We could try to string things together but why," Doyle told me, referring to his and his wife's plans for his career. "Let's take these things one at a time and make sure that we finish things up great at Domino's, and then we'll figure it out."
But close Doyle watchers might have suspected his plans all along. For one thing, he always harbored the idea that a ten-year run as CEO would be about right, and he just clicked past eight years. There were promotions of his top two lieutenants in late 2014, Richard "Ritch" Allison, who now will become CEO after heading international operations, and Russell Weiner, who has been tapped as COO and president of the Americas after heading the U.S. business.
And when he became CEO of the struggling brand in early 2010, Doyle said in last week's news release, he set three goals for himself. One of them was to become the No. 1 pizza company in the world. He shared that goal and used it to inspire his team, Domino's franchisees and the troops in general.
Sure enough: Doyle has revealed in talking about his "retirement" that Domino's has determined the company surpassed struggling Pizza Hut sometime last year to become the world's No. 1 pizza seller. "Different vendors" of metrics told him so, and Domino's occupation of the industry pinnacle is indisputable at this point, Doyle said.
"Ultimately, it comes down to a couple of things," he said. "History shows that public-company CEOs, after about 10 years -- their performance doesn't tend to be as strong. I always had in my head 10 years and set goals for the company that way. We've reached those.
"But most important in driving timing is that there's a certain rhythm to succession plans. I'll have been in the job eight and a half years at the end of June, and I've hit specific goals that I had for the performance of the business. I've got a terrific successor as CEO, and he's ready to go. And so you take that window and say it's time to do it."
Yes, Doyle would talk about not only wanting Domino's to be No. 1 but about how he wanted his company to become dominant in what has been a highly fragmented business.
"We're in the same range as Pizza Hut with about a 15 [percent] share of the category," he told me last fall. "If we were sitting here today and had a 40 share I might have a different answer" to a question about his goals. "But we're only selling one out of seven pizzas in the US, so there is much room for us to grow."
And some CEOs might have stuck around to try to make that happen. But Doyle is nothing if not a sports fan; one of his favorite management analogies is that too many coaches fail to attempt to get a first down on fourth down instead of punt, meaning that business leaders should understand the difference between calculated risks and foolish ones.
But here's another sports analogy that Doyle apparently appreciates: It's better for an athlete to retire when he's got at least a year or two of greatness than after sliding over the hill.
"Sometimes people wind up staying a little longer than they should and it's not a good thing for the company," Doyle said. "It's not what would maximize performance for the company over the long term. You know it's going to be about someone else leading the business eventually, and so when they're ready, you do it."
