Why mis-hires almost always originate before the search even begins
For many CEOs and HR leaders, leadership decisions feel riskier today than they did just a few years ago.
Not because there is a lack of candidates – but because the context is changing faster than the logic used to make decisions.
Roles are shifting, organisations are transforming in parallel, expectations increasingly contradict one another. Decisions have to be made while the framework itself remains unstable. This is where uncertainty emerges: the security of former decision-making models no longer holds.
International research into leadership and CEO agendas confirms this perception. It does not point to a classic talent shortage, but to something more fundamental: uncertainty about how leadership decisions should be prepared in a meaningful way today. The Global Leadership Forecast 2025 by DDI highlights this development very clearly – rising complexity, increasing pressure and a growing sense of insufficient preparation within leadership systems worldwide.
https://www.ddi.com/research/global-leadership-forecast-2025
The costs rarely arise during the interview process.
They emerge much earlier – where decisions are framed incorrectly or not consciously taken at all.
Roles are defined by the past rather than the future
Many appointments start with a detailed role profile. Tasks, responsibilities and requirements are clearly described. And yet, after the appointment, there is often a sense that something does not quite add up.
This is frequently because roles are shaped more by their history than by future demands. What has worked in the past is simply carried forward – even though market conditions, technology or governance structures have already changed significantly.
Analyses by Heidrick & Struggles on CEO and board succession highlight this exact tension. In their CEO & Board Confidence Monitor 2025, boards themselves express doubts as to whether their succession processes are sufficiently future-ready.
https://www.heidrick.com/en/insights/leadership-succession-planning/ceo-and-board-confidence-monitor-2025_persistent-concerns-pockets-of-increased-confidence
Why this becomes costly:
Continuous course corrections, organisational friction and loss of trust. It often takes months before it becomes clear that the issue is not the individual, but the role itself.
What helps:
Understanding roles not as a continuation of existing tasks, but as a strategic space for impact and decision-making. Before the search begins, roles should be sharpened along key decision areas, interfaces and expectation conflicts – not along a traditional job description. The critical question is not: What should this role do?
But rather: What does the organisation need this role for over the next 12 to 24 months?
Speed replaces clarity
In times of change, pressure to act quickly increases. Decisions are expected, gaps must be closed, signals sent. Speed easily becomes an end in itself.
What is often missing is clarity: Who is truly accountable? Who decides – and who executes? And what happens if decisions prove to be wrong?
McKinsey shows in multiple analyses of decision-making that the main issue is not a lack of strategy, but unclear decision architecture – particularly missing ownership and insufficient communication after decisions have been made.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/untangling-your-organizations-decision-making
Why this becomes costly:
Loss of time, political friction and fragmented leadership. Interim or permanent appointments can even amplify these effects if the decision framework is not clearly defined.
What helps:
Before an appointment is made, explicitly clarifying where decision rights lie, which expectations are realistic and how success will be assessed in the first months. Especially in transition situations, it is essential to clearly define mandate, responsibility and room for action – regardless of whether a role is interim or permanent.
Experience is mistaken for future readiness
CVs convey a sense of security. They show career steps, responsibility and familiar patterns. At top-management level in particular, this can feel reassuring.
At the same time, the Global Leadership Forecast 2025 shows clearly that experience alone is becoming a weaker indicator of how well leaders can deal with uncertainty, ambiguity and new contexts. Many feel insufficiently prepared for today’s complexity despite impressive careers.
https://www.ddi.com/research/global-leadership-forecast-2025
Egon Zehnder addresses this tension in its work on CEO succession under the concept of “potential over pedigree” – emphasising the need to prioritise learning ability and decision-making capability over linear career paths.
https://www.egonzehnder.com/what-we-do/ceo-succession
Why this becomes costly:
Leaders who were successful in stable systems lose impact in volatile environments. Decisions slow down, priorities blur and organisational alignment weakens.
What helps:
In addition to experience, deliberately assessing the ability to deal with uncertainty: learning agility, reflective capacity and decision quality under incomplete information. Structured potential diagnostics and robust management assessments can help make these dimensions visible – particularly where traditional CVs reach their limits.
Leadership is only developed once the organisation is already under strain
Leadership development in many organisations remains reactive. Only when performance, collaboration or culture visibly deteriorate does development begin.
The Harvard Business Review shows that leadership under uncertainty requires different decision routines than classical management models – and that delayed development can no longer close this gap. (In German available only:
https://hbr.org/2022/03/how-leaders-can-make-better-decisions-under-uncertainty
McKinsey also emphasises that sustainable transformation fails less due to strategy and more due to insufficient leadership effectiveness and behavioural change.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/how-to-capture-the-elusive-performance-edge-in-true-transformations
Why this becomes costly:
Declining commitment, cultural erosion and operational friction – effects that cannot be fixed in the short term.
What helps:
Viewing leadership early on as a strategic prerequisite rather than a reaction to problems. Development work unfolds its impact before transformation begins – where roles, expectations and decision logics are still shapeable, not only once systems are already under pressure. This requires asking early questions such as: Which leadership decisions will gain importance in the coming months? Where will conflicts of objectives emerge for which no routines yet exist? And which leadership capabilities are needed to provide orientation under uncertainty – not merely to manage processes?
Conclusion
The situations described are rarely individual misjudgements.
They emerge where leadership decisions are prepared using logics that no longer fit today’s reality.
The costs do not arise immediately.
They accumulate over time – through friction, constant readjustment and lost impact.
Those who want to remain capable of acting in 2026 should therefore not view leadership decisions in isolation,
but recognise them for what they truly are: strategic turning Points.
Successful appointments do not begin with the search.
They begin with clarity.