Slow starter or mis-hire?

Hi Everyone,

Researchers at the University of South Carolina asked chief HR officers at large companies to describe senior hires that failed. Two findings stood out. When a C-suite hire is the wrong hire, it's usually clear within six to twelve months. And the person then stays in the role for more than two years.

Waiting is the expensive part. McKinsey found that while a leader struggles, their direct reports perform about 15% worse and are 20% more likely to lose motivation or leave.

Today we're sharing two questions that tell you, by day 90, whether a struggling senior hire needs coaching, a better setup, or an exit.

Has anything improved since day 30?

Results are a poor test this early. Most senior roles need six months or more to show up in the numbers, and judging a 90-day-old hire on output punishes people who are building properly.

Behavior shows sooner, so compare day 90 against day 30 on things you can see:

1. Have they built working relationships with the two or three colleagues their job depends on?
2. Is their team still intact, or have people started leaving?
3. When you gave direct feedback, did anything change within two weeks?
4. Can they point to one thing that works better because they arrived?

If the answers are mostly yes, or have been turning into yes since day 30, keep coaching. If most are still no, the next section tells you where the problem lives.

What broke?

If the answers point to a problem, it usually falls into one of three places:

1. The setup: Jason Lemkin, who has written about VP hiring for years at SaaStr, says of mis-hires that "it likely will be more your fault than theirs." That can mean the role was scoped in a hurry, you and the hire have different ideas of what the job is, or nobody introduced them to the people they'd need.

2. Old-company habits: The person keeps running the methods that worked at their last company, or they misread how decisions get made at yours. What separates this from a real mismatch is that feedback works. You name the problem, and within two weeks the behavior changes.

3. A real mismatch: The job needs something the person doesn't have. The USC study found internal promotions fail most often because the person can't operate at the larger scale of the new role. The sign is feedback that gets a polite thank-you and changes nothing.

Put the two answers together

If things improved between day 30 and day 90, keep coaching, whatever caused the slow start. Write down what you expect to see by day 150 and keep the feedback specific.

If nothing improved and the setup broke, fix the setup before you judge the person. In June we shared an operating agreement for senior hires, covering what the job is, which decisions are theirs, and what support you owe them. Fill it in now, even though the person started months ago, make the introductions yourself, and set a second review 60 days out. You get one reset like this, and only one. If nothing improves after a proper setup, the setup was never the problem.

If nothing improves and the job needs something the person doesn't have, plan the exit. We covered choosing between coaching, resetting, and replacing here. With a 90-day hire you have one advantage. The setup is still fresh enough to fix, so you can test it quickly and make the call knowing it was the person, and with a clear conscience.

And there's a fourth outcome. Nothing has improved, the fit is wrong, and you coach for another quarter anyway, because you championed the hire and an exit feels like admitting the mistake in public. That's usually why the exit happens two years later than it should.

Go Deeper

👉 ExecEdge: Do this before your next senior hire — the companion piece for your next hire; agree on the rules before day one, and you may never need today's issue.

👉 University of South Carolina: C-Suite Succession Failures — read this to see why internal promotions and external hires fail for completely different reasons, straight from the CHROs who lived through both.

👉 Harvard Business Review: Onboarding Isn't Enough — use this before your next senior hire starts; proper integration cuts time to full performance from six months to four.

👉 SaaStr: 30 SaaS CEOs share the signs their first VP of Sales wasn't going to work out — scan this if you have a doubt today; founders name the early warnings they wish they'd acted on.

👉 McKinsey: Successfully transitioning to new leadership roles — worth ten minutes for the numbers on what a struggling transition costs the team underneath.

Coming up tomorrow

Tomorrow, we're breaking down the three phrase types that sound like progress in meetings but leave nothing decided.

P.S. Have a great week!