Do this before your next senior hire

Hi Everyone,

Around 40% of senior external hires are pushed out, fail, or leave within their first 18 months.

That figure comes from a Heidrick & Struggles study of 20,000 executive placements. The most common reason was culture fit.

Culture fit is not only about whether someone gets along with the team. It includes the unwritten rules inside a company: who decides what, when to escalate, what peers expect, and how decisions actually get made.

A senior hire has to work all of this out quickly. Yet these rules rarely appear in a standard 30-60-90-day plan.

A better approach is to create an operating agreement. It puts the unwritten rules on paper alongside the outcomes the new hire is expected to deliver. It should cover five areas.

1. Situation diagnosis

Start with a short description of the business or team the person is joining. Michael Watkins’ STARS framework gives you five useful categories: start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success.

Choosing the category matters because it sets the pace for everything that follows.

A turnaround leader may need to act quickly. Someone sustaining success may do more damage by changing too much, too soon.

2. Success criteria

Write down the outcomes the hire is expected to deliver. Each one should describe a result you can observe by a specific date. For example:

• CFO at Day 60: "Finance team and CEO use the same numbers in board prep."
• CMO at Day 90: "Marketing and sales using one definition of a qualified lead, tracked in a shared dashboard."

These are different from activities such as completing onboarding, meeting the team, or building relationships (those belong on the onboarding checklist). The operating agreement should focus on the outcomes you expect the person to deliver.

3. Decision rights

Create three columns:

1. What the hire can decide alone.
2. What the hire and their manager decide together.
3. What the manager continues to decide.

Be specific. Include decisions such as pricing changes, senior hires, large deals, budget increases, and vendor contracts.

Senior hires often fail because they make a decision they did not realize was outside their authority. Putting the boundaries in writing prevents both micromanagement and overreach.

4. Cadence and escalation

Agree on when the new hire and manager will meet, what they will review, and which situations require immediate contact.

For the first 90 days, this could include a weekly one-to-one, a monthly review of the operating agreement, and a clear channel for urgent questions.

You should also agree on what counts as urgent. The goal is to stop the new hire from escalating everything while making sure they do not sit on something important.

5. What the boss owes the hire

The operating agreement covers what the new hire is expected to do and what support the manager will provide.

An Egon Zehnder survey of more than 500 senior executives found that 57% stated difficulty building relationships with peers as one of the biggest obstacles in a new role.

The manager cannot leave those relationships to chance. List the people the new hire needs to meet, the leadership meetings they should attend, and the context they need before making important decisions.

The manager should also explain publicly why the person was hired, what authority they have, and how the rest of the team should work with them.

Try this today

We put together a free operating agreement template you can copy.
If you hired someone senior in the past 90 days, complete it this week and review it during your next one-to-one.

If you expect to hire someone into a senior role during the next six months, draft the agreement before you make the offer.

Get your free template

Go deeper

👉 McKinsey: It really isn't about 100 days — why senior hires take longer than 90 days to reach full productivity, and the five areas McKinsey says matter most.

👉 Egon Zehnder: Executive Integration Efforts Failing to Meet the Needs of Senior Leaders — what 500+ senior executives wish their employers had done differently in their first weeks.

👉 First Round Review: The Indispensable Document for the Modern Manager — Jay Desai's manager user guide and companion guide method.

👉 Deloitte: The myth of 'the first 90 days' — the case against measuring senior hires at 90 days, built on 500+ executive transitions.

👉 Michael Watkins: The First 90 Days — the book behind this entire issue, covering STARS, the Five Conversations, and the full "negotiating success" approach.

Coming up tomorrow

Tomorrow, we’ll look at five signs that someone has already grown into their next role.

Have a great week!

P.S. Forward this to a leader who is about to make a senior hire. It’s much easier to agree on the rules before the person starts than after something goes wrong.