Search firms are not usually asked whether an appointment should be made. They are asked to make it happen. The following four situations come up often enough to be worth naming.
The first is the proxy appointment. A board is dissatisfied with performance in an area but has not established why. Appointing a leader over it transfers the problem rather than solving it, and the new leader inherits a mandate nobody has defined. Six months later the same conversation happens about them.
The second is the premature appointment. The strategy requires a capability in eighteen months, and the instinct is to hire now so the person is in place. Senior people appointed ahead of the work they were hired for become frustrated, start reorganising to create scope, and often leave before the role they joined for exists.
The third is the covering appointment. An existing leader is underperforming but the conversation has not been had, so a second senior role is created alongside them. The cost is two salaries, a confused organisation and a reputational signal the market reads accurately.
The fourth is the capability that should be borrowed rather than owned. Some requirements are genuinely temporary: a transformation, a system implementation, a first year of a new market. Fractional or interim capability meets them at a fraction of the cost and without the exit conversation later.
The counter-test is worth applying before any search is authorised. If this appointment is made and succeeds completely, what becomes possible that is not possible now? Where the answer is vague, the appointment is not ready to be made.
If this appointment succeeds completely, what becomes possible that is not possible now? Where the answer is vague, the appointment is not ready.
