Have you ever experienced growing tension between departments, lower company morale, or decreased innovation? There’s a good chance the problem didn’t start with strategy or execution. Your organization might be straying from its original purpose, which begins with the people setting the tone at the top. Mission drift often starts in the boardroom at the C-suite hiring table.
Every executive you hire either reinforces your mission or redirects it. That’s why it’s so important to consider every aspect of a C-level candidate—not just their competencies but their values and leadership style. That way, you can make sure they align with your company and will lead you in the direction you want to go.
Costs of Mission Drift
Mission drift usually creeps in over time. A new product launch that feels “off-brand.” A leadership style that favors speed over service. A policy change that puts profits ahead of people.
One day, you realize your organization doesn’t feel like it used to. Employees disengage. Donors or clients question your direction. Performance metrics stay flat, even though activity levels are high. The cost of drift almost always starts with leadership choices.
C-Suite Hiring Drives Your Organization
When you hire someone for a C-level role, you choose your organization’s future. These leaders define how your mission shows up in day-to-day decisions, budgeting priorities, team structure, company policies, and external messaging.
Let’s say your recently hired Chief Financial Officer (CFO) comes from a for-profit background and is laser-focused on aggressive cost-cutting. Your nonprofit healthcare organization appreciates the financial improvements, but not at the expense of care quality and staff morale. You exist to aid underserved communities. Your executive search for a CFO needed to align with your vision so you could find a candidate to support your mission.
Most people assume that an experienced executive will naturally pick up on the organization’s values and culture. They ask questions about general values during interviews but don’t prioritize values specific to their mission or consider whether a candidate’s responses truly match their purpose. The misalignment of values between organizations and hiring is the root of mission drift.
Hire Intentionally
Changing how you hire at the C-suite level is the key to preventing mission drift. You can’t prevent every challenge to your mission, but you can hire people who always steer your organization in the right direction. Hiring those leaders starts with defining your values and sticking to your mission throughout your hiring process.
Define Your Values
To make mission alignment part of your hiring rubric, define the values behind your mission and review them at every stage of the hiring process. Then, you can evaluate candidates specifically for alignment to your organization’s purpose.
Prioritize and be specific about your values. Consider which values you are most passionate about concerning your employees, stakeholders, and customers. Consider how those values set you apart from your competitors. Based on your brainstorming, pick between three and five values most critical to your mission. A long list of vague values won’t prevent mission drift.
Maybe you are a commercial construction company specializing in healthcare projects, and your mission is to build community. After considering your mission and organizational culture, you decide that inclusion in the workplace, consideration for medical staff’s needs in your designs, and generosity throughout your company are the top three values that support your mission. Now you have hiring direction.
Involve Your Board
In many organizations, the board or founders have a strong vision for the mission. However, most leaders leave C-suite hiring to other people until the final interview. By then, you have already lost the vision. Instead, involve your board or key stakeholders throughout the hiring process.
Ask them to define mission alignment and company values. Connect those definitions to tangible success items you and your board want from your executive hire. Invite your board and stakeholders to help craft interview questions. Ask them to join multiple interviews and consider their opinions on the candidate’s alignment with your mission.
Your founder and board members don’t need to be involved in every detail of C-level hiring, but using their expertise to anchor your hiring process allows you to delegate effectively. To simplify the process, consider using a well-recommended C-suite executive search firm that will involve your board members and support your mission-based hiring.
Go Deep in Your Interview
Evaluating candidates for their alignment with your values and mission is difficult. Resumes do not always provide the full picture, and even the interview process does not automatically shed light on how they will lead your company.
Look for evidence, not just enthusiasm, in your interviews. Ask insightful questions like:
- How have you demonstrated commitment to a mission in your past roles?
- When have you made a difficult choice in favor of values over profit?
- Can you identify other areas of your life outside work that are value-driven? How do your values influence your decisions in that area?
- What personal or professional values drive your leadership decisions?
- Can you describe a time when you had to advocate for a purpose others didn’t initially support?
- How would you preserve our mission while scaling operations or entering new markets?
These questions invite depth. You hear about candidates’ thought processes, values, and commitment to shared missions.
Prioritize Culture Add
“Culture add” means hiring someone who supports your mission and brings new strengths to your team. You’re not looking for sameness. You’re looking for shared purpose. “Culture add” brings fresh problem-solving. In practice, this looks like balancing your required values with an open mind.
Maybe an executive search firm specializing in construction has identified two qualified candidates aligned with your community-building mission. You could take those recommendations and list the different strengths of each candidate. Compare that to your company’s needs to evaluate which new skills, ideas, experiences, contacts, or perspectives each candidate has to offer that will keep your company relevant without sacrificing your purpose.
Set the Tone Early
The first few months after you hire your new executive will either affirm or challenge your mission. Create a strategic onboarding process that roots them in your mission. Introduce them to the stories, traditions, and values that shaped your organization. Let them meet clients, community members, frontline staff, and everyone impacted by their work. Help them connect emotionally with your purpose so it will guide their decisions.
Think of focusing on purpose during onboarding as mission insurance. Leaders don’t understand your mission and culture by accident. Focusing on your “why” early in the process shows that your mission is a way of operating, making decisions, and navigating ambiguity.
Stay the Course
Hiring executives is about choosing leaders who shape your culture, develop your people, represent your values, and forward your business growth. You set the course with mission-based C-level hiring to preserve your mission. Hiring intentionally takes commitment and effort, but staying true to your mission becomes second nature when you get the right people at the top.
