According to this author, P&G CEO Bob McDonald lacks the "Mandate of Heaven."

 

Steve Watkins

Staff Reporter- Business Courier

If business success is a thing of destiny, Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald doesn’t have it. At least, not if you believe a former investment adviser who uses an ancient oracle to tell him which companies and CEOs are headed for greatness.

Julio Urvina has matched up each major company executive against the 3,000-year-old "I Ching" oracle. It’s an ancient Chinese book that offers 64 different hexagrams that place people in various categories. They’re traits such as "Creative," "Youthful Folly," "Modesty," "Enthusiasm" and "Retreat." Some are negative and some are positive, but only a few people are lucky enough to have hexagrams that foretell they have “the Mandate of Heaven.”

General Electric (NYSE: GE) CEO Jack Welch had it. His successor, Jeff Immelt, didn’t, Urvina says. He has chronicled all this in the newly released updated version of his 2002 book, “The Tao for CEOs and Investors.”

The premise for success is simple.

“All that is needed is a CEO who will first find harmony within his own soul and then bring harmony to the entire corporation,” Urvina wrote in the book’s introduction.

If Urvina’s interpretation of I Ching, which is divined by tossing coins, is to be believed, P&G’s (NYSE: PG) board needs to find a new CEO.

Why? Because McDonald has the unfortunate destiny of being saddled with the "Splitting Apart" hexagram. That says that the CEO is surrounded by inferior executives who are conspiring against him. There’s little he can do to prevent the company from splitting apart.

Urvina takes comfort in knowing that some analysts are calling for P&G to be split apart, matching McDonald’s hexagram, because the company has gotten too big and the pieces might be more valuable than the whole.

“Fascinating how the I Ching predicts the future,” Urvina said.

Urvina pointed out in the book that P&G’s stock performance has fallen well short of the S&P 500’s gain since McDonald took over in 2009.

“He will encounter very difficult conditions as he deals with the ‘Splitting Apart Time-Space,’” Urvina wrote in the book. “’The Splitting Apart Time-Space’ is very negative. He must follow the I Ching’s advice: those above can ensure their position only by giving generously to those below.”

Urvina said in an email that P&G’s board’s decision to name McDonald CEO sealed the company’s fate.

“There is little they can do except change him. He is not a bad manager, but he does not have the ‘Mandate of Heaven,’” Urvina wrote in the email. “The faster the (board of directors) looks for a CEO with the ‘Mandate of Heaven,’ the faster the corporation will return to its winning ways.”

McDonald can take comfort in knowing very few CEOs have the mandate. Those at News Corp., Microsoft and others don’t have it, either.

In case you’re curious about Urvina’s background, he lives in Venezuela and claims he worked as a financial adviser at Merrill Lynch for 12 years and 10 years for Citigroup. He’s also been an outside adviser for banks and brokerage firms and has managed investment portfolios for 33 years, he said in an email.