When a senior appointment does not work out, attention usually turns to the person or the search process. The organisation questions whether the candidate was assessed thoroughly enough, whether references revealed the full picture or whether somebody with different experience should have been appointed.
Those are reasonable questions, but they begin quite late in the story.
Many appointments start to struggle before a search firm has been engaged, a candidate has been approached or an interview has taken place. The difficulty is often created while the organisation is deciding why the role exists, what the person will be expected to achieve and how much authority they will have once they arrive.
A title is agreed, a position description is prepared and the search begins. Everyone involved believes they understand the requirement. What may not yet have been tested is whether they understand it in the same way.
A Board may want an executive who can challenge the existing strategy and develop a new direction. The CEO may want someone who will execute a strategy that has already been agreed. The leadership team may expect an additional executive to relieve pressure on functions that are carrying too much responsibility. Investors may see the appointment as evidence that the organisation is becoming ready for its next stage.
Each expectation is understandable. Together, they may create a role that is difficult to perform.
This is one of the reasons apparently strong appointments can encounter difficulties early. The person joins with relevant experience, a credible track record and a positive mandate, but gradually discovers that stakeholders have different views about why they were appointed. Time that should have been spent building the organisation is used trying to reconcile expectations that existed before they arrived.
The issue is not always a poor appointment. It is often an unresolved organisational decision.
A useful way to examine the mandate is to separate the result, the work and the conditions required for success. The result describes what should be different because the person has joined. The work describes what they will actually need to lead, build or change. The conditions describe what the organisation must provide if the person is to deliver it.
The distinction matters because many briefs describe the result without adequately considering the work. An organisation may say that a new commercial executive must accelerate growth. That is the desired result. The work may involve selecting target markets, deciding between direct commercialisation and partnerships, establishing pricing and reimbursement pathways, building a team, developing customer relationships and improving the quality of commercial information available to the Board.
The conditions may include sufficient funding, agreement on geographic priorities, access to clinical and market evidence, clear decision rights and support from the rest of the executive team. If those conditions are absent, the executive may be accountable for an outcome without having the organisational support required to create it.
Consider a life sciences company approaching commercialisation. The Board agrees that it needs a Chief Commercial Officer and begins defining the ideal candidate. The initial brief asks for someone who has launched products, built teams, developed partnerships and worked across international markets.
As the mandate is explored in more detail, it becomes apparent that the company has not yet decided whether its primary pathway is direct commercialisation, licensing or a combination of the two. Its target markets remain under discussion, the reimbursement strategy is still developing and the timing of commercial investment depends on a future clinical milestone.
The company may still need senior commercial capability, but it has not necessarily reached the point where it can define a continuing Chief Commercial Officer mandate. The immediate requirement may be for someone who can assess the commercial pathways, challenge the underlying assumptions and help determine which organisation should then be built.
That insight could change the role, the employment model or the sequence of appointments. It might lead to a permanent executive with an explicit strategy-development mandate. It might indicate that fractional commercial leadership should come first. It might show that market access, business development or another specialist capability would unlock more progress at this stage.
None of those options can be considered properly if the organisation begins with the assumption that the title has already resolved the capability question.
Authority creates another common difficulty. Organisations sometimes recruit a person to lead significant change without clarifying what they will be able to decide. The brief uses words such as transform, build, lead and establish, while the governance and decision-making arrangements remain unchanged.
A new Chief Executive may be asked to transform the organisation while the Board continues to make decisions that would ordinarily sit with management. A Country Head may be expected to build the local business but have limited control over hiring, investment or market priorities. A functional executive may be tasked with rebuilding capability while inheriting structures and people they do not have authority to change.
Candidates should understand these conditions before accepting the role. More importantly, the organisation should understand them before beginning the search. If the authority attached to the appointment does not match the outcome expected from it, the issue cannot be solved by finding a stronger candidate.
This is where a practical mandate statement can be useful. Before preparing a position description, the organisation should be able to explain in ordinary language what the person will take responsibility for, what should be different within a defined period and which decisions they will have the authority to make.
For example, “This person will build our Australian commercial operation” is not yet a complete mandate. It leaves open whether they are defining the strategy or executing one, whether they will build a team, whether they control the investment required and how success will be assessed.
A clearer statement might explain that the person will confirm the initial market pathway, establish the operating model, recruit the first commercial and medical appointments and take responsibility for agreed launch-readiness measures over the next eighteen months. That statement gives the organisation a better basis for determining the experience required and gives candidates a more honest view of the opportunity.
Alignment should also be tested rather than assumed. If the Board Chair, CEO and other relevant stakeholders were separately asked what this person must achieve, what they should prioritise in their first year and which decisions they will control, the answers should be recognisably similar. They do not need to be identical, but material differences should be resolved before the market is approached.
This has a direct effect on assessment. A vague mandate encourages assessment based on reputation, seniority and general career success. A clear mandate allows the organisation to examine whether the person has previously dealt with comparable work, constraints and organisational conditions.
Someone may have led a highly successful product launch within a multinational company supported by established systems, a large team and significant market infrastructure. That experience is valuable, but it is not automatically evidence that they can build a commercial pathway within an emerging company with limited resources and unresolved strategic questions.
Similarly, an executive may have transformed a function with strong sponsorship and established authority. If the new environment involves more complex governance, less organisational support or significant stakeholder resistance, the assessment needs to explore how they worked through those conditions rather than simply noting that they led a transformation.
The strongest evidence is rarely the title someone has held. It is the work they have already done, the circumstances in which they did it and the judgement they exercised when the path was unclear.
A successful search therefore begins with more than agreement on the role. It begins with alignment on the outcome, the work, the authority and the conditions around the appointment. It also requires honesty about what is already in place and what the new person will inherit.
No mandate will remove every uncertainty. Senior people are often appointed because the organisation needs their judgement in circumstances that cannot be fully predicted. The objective is not to create a perfect brief. It is to ensure that the uncertainty forms part of the mandate rather than remaining hidden behind it.
When that work is done properly, the search changes. The market can be mapped against the actual challenge. Candidates can be approached with a credible explanation of why the appointment matters. Assessment can focus on relevant evidence rather than title matching. The person who eventually joins has a clearer understanding of what they are there to make possible.
The quality of the appointment is shaped long before the shortlist is presented. It begins when the organisation decides whether it is recruiting a title, replacing a person or introducing capability to achieve something specific. That is why the work completed before the search is not a preliminary step. It is part of the search itself.
Define the mandate before entering the market
You may have an approved role, an emerging requirement or several stakeholders with different views about what an appointment should achieve. Hunton Executive can help you clarify the mandate, test the assumptions behind it and identify the leadership or specialist capability required.
About Hunton Executive
Executive search, strategic headhunting, and specialist recruitment for healthcare and life sciences organisations. From Board appointments and executive leadership to the specialist capability around them. Permanent, interim and fractional.