When growth stalls or complexity rises, the instinct is to look for a person.
A new COO.
A stronger Head of People.
A more commercial leader.
Sometimes that is the right call. But often, it isn't.
Companies often move too quickly from internal pressure to role definition and hiring. They feel friction, assume the answer is a person, and start writing a job description before properly diagnosing the problem.
What looks like a hiring gap is frequently a signal that something deeper has not been designed clearly enough. Many leadership challenges are not caused by a missing individual.
They are caused by a lack of clarity around:
- Structure
- Scope
- Timing
- Decision rights
- Cross-functional integration
- The actual mix of capability the business needs
That distinction matters more than it seems. A struggling function does not always mean the company needs a stronger leader.
- Sometimes the mandate is unclear.
- Sometimes ownership is split awkwardly across too many people.
- Sometimes the founder is still sitting in the middle of decisions they need to let go of.
- Sometimes the business is hiring for a stage it has not yet grown into.
This is one reason seemingly good hires disappoint. The post-mortem usually focuses on the person.
Not strategic enough. Not hands-on enough. Not the right fit. Too corporate. Too lightweight. Too slow.
And sometimes that is true.
But sometimes the company hired into a design flaw and expected the individual to compensate for it. That is a very different problem.
A capable leader can still fail in a poorly designed system.
This is why many companies are solving the wrong problem. They think they are hiring into a gap. Often, they are hiring into a system that has not yet been properly designed.
Before deciding who to hire, get clear on the leadership system you are trying to build.
Don't start with hiring. Start with design.