Jeff Kindler's Journey from GC to Pfizer CEO to Corporate Outcast

For many years, former trial lawyer Jeff Kindler's career path moved in one direction: up. His resume includes stints as a Supreme Court clerk, star litigator, in-house lawyer at General Electric, general counsel for McDonald's, and eventually CEO of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. But from that high perch, he fell far and landed with a painful thud.

Fortune magazine's feature about Kindler's rise and fall, "Inside Pfizer's Palace Coup," is a detailed and thoroughly reported story that is the result of four months work and more than 100 interviews by reporters Peter Elkind and Jennifer Reingold with Doris Burke.

The piece opens at the end, with Kindler using his courtroom skills to mount a detailed defense of his tenure as CEO to Pfizer's board—a defense presented mostly to directors who had already decided that Kindler's erratic management style and brusque personality meant it was time for him to go.

Ironically, the reporters suggest that it was Kindler's legal background that may have hobbled his ability to move from the law department to the executive suite: "[Kindler] remained a confrontational trial lawyer: He sought knowledge through interrogation; he was skeptical of what he was told, even when it came from people who knew far more about a subject than he did; and he bored in relentlessly on small details, always searching for the sort of nuance that could make or break a legal case—but seemed trivial in other contexts."

The long-form Fortune story details the deft maneuvering Kindler used to move from the GC to CEO spots, his fractious relationships with both subordinates and board members, the peculiar alliance he formed with Pfizer HR chief Mary McLeod, and his ultimate inability to navigate the company's established culture and evolving business model. (More recently, Kindler has found success in Washington, D.C., joining President Obama's Management Advisory Board and earning a spot on the shortlist for Secretary of Commerce.) For any in-house lawyer with eyes on corporate advancement, Kindler's tale is as dramatic and intriguing as it is cautionary.

via law.com

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