It’s 14 months after your last round of hiring, and you’ve lost another executive. This one stuck around for 2 years but disengaged 6 months before resigning. And now you’re spending time and money to fill a critical leadership seat…again.
For a retention problem like this, it’s easy to blame the compensation or the market. Or you may see a disconnect between the executive and your company culture. Those explanations might be accurate. But it could also reach deeper into your leadership organization.
C-level hiring experts and retained executive recruiters find that companies that keep hiring for the same position often have a role design problem.
Recognize When the Role Is the Real Issue
Role design problems are sneaky. You and the candidates don’t notice any issues during the recruitment process. But months later, your talented new leader starts to struggle in unexpected ways.
Say your new Chief Operations Officer (COO) is supposed to be streamlining processes. You know this leader can improve efficiency. They’ve done it before. But they’re spending all their time managing IT fires instead. It’s like they just cannot deliver as a COO in your company. And as frustration grows for you and your executives, eventually, they leave.
When the next hire follows the same pattern, it’s likely the role is poorly designed. This is especially true when turnover clusters around specific positions. If you suspect your retention problem might be a role design issue, look closer at your leadership structure for these three signs.
1. The Scope Keeps Expanding
Some executive roles start with a clear mandate and then absorb everything no one else wants to own. Maybe you hired a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead product engineering, but now they’re also managing cybersecurity and vendor negotiations. Or you might have brought on a new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to drive brand strategy, only to expect them to run investor events and manage the company website.
Map out every responsibility currently attached to the position to discover if your recruitment problem is an unfocused leadership role. When a role expands beyond its original boundaries, the executive can’t focus on what they were hired to do. They spend their energy juggling responsibilities rather than driving results. Their work quality drops, burnout sets in, and you lose another leader.
2. Authority Doesn’t Match Responsibility
Few things drive away talented executives faster than being held accountable for outcomes they can’t control. Assigning your leaders responsibilities that they don’t have the power to fulfill could be causing your retention problem.
Say you expect your Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to get approval from three other executives to make spending decisions. But they are also in charge of the budget. This inefficient process creates bottlenecks in your financial processes and undermines your CFO. And when talented leaders feel powerless, they disengage or leave for opportunities where they can actually lead.
Executives need the authority to act on their responsibilities. Talk with your current C-level team about any gaps between what you expect and what each role can do. If they’ve noticed any misalignment between executive authority and accountability, you’ll likely need to redesign some leadership roles.
3. Success Is Undefined
Many companies hire senior leaders with a general sense of what they need but no specific outcomes tied to the role. But without clear success criteria, executives operate on assumptions. They prioritize what they think matters, which may not match what you expect.
Six months in, the executive thinks they’re delivering until you explain how they’re not reaching your goals. Now both sides feel disappointed and betrayed. This disconnect erodes trust, and the relationship falls apart.
For your last round of C-level recruitment, did you define what success looks like at 12 months? Did you highlight what progress you hope to see at 24 months? Did you explain which challenges take priority? If your answer is vague, you’re not alone, but you’ve also found the flaw in your role’s design.
Assess the Cost of Role Design Failure
A poorly designed role can start a destructive cycle in your company. On the surface, you lose significant time and money with each new executive hire. That loss includes untapped revenue from lost opportunities.
Then it ripples to the rest of your company. Your C-level team works overtime to absorb the additional responsibilities while you search for a replacement, increasing the chances they’ll burn out. This turnover also disrupts the people who reported to the executive. Without clear leadership, problems go unsolved, and projects stall. Morale dips company-wide.
Over time, the repeated turnover and the fractured culture damage your reputation as an employer. Word travels that your organization has issues, making it harder to attract top talent and fill the empty executive role.
Like termites in a wooden house, you may not be able to see the immediate damage from your poorly designed executive role. But if you don’t address the issues, it slowly eats away at your company’s supporting beams until you’re ready to collapse.
Redesign the Role Before Hiring Again
If you suspect role design is driving turnover, resist the urge to contact potential candidates immediately. That’s like discovering you have termites and propping up the walls with another two-by-four. Instead, step back and rebuild your foundation.
Get Stakeholder Alignment
Internal disagreement can be the symptom behind all the signs of role design failure. When your CEO envisions the CMO as a brand builder, and your board sees them as a revenue driver, your new leader walks into a minefield of conflicting demands and mismatched authority.
Bring all the stakeholders together to surface disagreements and build consensus around the role. You might involve related department heads, investors, board members, and upper management.
It can be challenging to manage all these perspectives while keeping the company running, which is where executive recruiters can help. These hiring experts use brief interviews with a variety of stakeholders to learn about your company’s executive needs and handle the legwork for reconciling different perspectives.
Internal alignment on the role’s purpose, scope, and authority acts as the blueprint for reconstruction. You can address the three specific signs of role failure and create an empowered executive position focused on the success outcomes that stakeholders value.
Audit the Role’s Scope
Focus the role’s scope by identifying every current responsibility. Then reassign any absorbed functions that should sit elsewhere. If you realize a single executive has too many responsibilities, consider splitting the role.
For example, you may need a CTO and a Chief Information Officer (CIO) to address product engineering, cybersecurity, internal troubleshooting, software development, and long-term tech strategy. This kind of assessment can be hard when you’re in the thick of it. Working with CIO executive recruiters can give you an outside and expert perspective on the direction your company needs to take.
A focused role attracts candidates who are more interested in your specific opportunity. And because you’ve set them up to succeed, they are much more likely to enjoy their work and stay with your company.
Align Authority with Accountability
Once you’ve identified the executive’s major responsibility, ask yourself and other leaders whether the executive has the decision-making power to deliver results. If your COO is responsible for operational efficiency, for instance, can they restructure teams and invest in tools?
You may need help discovering these disconnects. A C-level search partner can help you identify the past issues and pressure-test the role for any gaps between what you expect and what you allow your leaders to do.
If you discover the executive doesn’t have the authority to fulfill their role, consider reassigning the function to another leader or adjusting procedures to better empower this role. These changes may not be easy, but the effort to align authority with accountability saves you significantly more in the long run.
Define Measurable Success Outcomes
Setting specific milestones with definite goals gives your leadership team, stakeholders, and new executive a shared goal. Give your new executive a roadmap and give yourself an honest way to evaluate progress.
That requires concrete outcomes. Instead of asking your new CFO to “improve financial performance,” specify that you expect an analysis of current cash flow in 12 months, reduced working capital needs in 18 months, and an optimized capital structure at 24 months.
Transparency about your expectations fosters an honest and productive relationship with your leaders and leads to long-term partnerships. A retained C-level search firm can support that connection by focusing the recruitment process on your success outcomes and following up with candidates after the onboarding process. Their help with check-ins during this critical period is just another way you can improve your executive retention.
Build Retention From the Ground Up
Most companies consider retention strategies only after someone is hired. But you can’t keep the roof up if the walls are falling. And no amount of post-hire effort can keep an executive at your company if the role itself is broken.
The next time you lose an executive, stop and consider the responsibilities, authority, and success criteria for that position. Redesign the role before you start hiring again. Give your next leader the foundation to perform and grow with your company for years to come.
That’s retention built from the ground up.
