Ep. 260 — Steve Moss: Why Half Your Executive Hires Fail in 18 Months

5 min read

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Episode Summary

You finally pulled the trigger on the senior hire. Six figures, recruiter fee paid, big résumé, big promise to take the function off your plate. Three months in you’re already getting that feeling in your stomach. The numbers behind that feeling are brutal: about 50% of senior executives fail in the first 18 months, and the all-in cost when it goes sideways runs two to three times their salary. Steve Moss founded Executive Springboard after spending his career as a CMO in global organizations, and his data on why these hires blow up is the part most owners never see. Functional competence is the reason about 11% of the time. The other 89% is people, culture, politics, and the sink-or-swim mentality owners default to when they think a senior person should “figure it out.” Steve and I got into the five top reasons executives flame out, why the 90-day plan should be written before the final interview (and will be wrong), why he won’t put a mentor inside the company for the top seat, and why eight months is the number where new executives actually feel like they belong. Real example near the end about a VP of Ops who closed her CEO’s door and earned the entire engagement fee in one conversation.

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## Top 10 Takeaways
  1. Half your senior hires will fail in 18 months, and the all-in cost is two to three times their salary.
  2. Functional competence is only 11% of why executives wash out. The other 89% is people, culture, and politics.
  3. Before hiring outside, ask if your internal candidate can be ready in a year. That math usually wins.
  4. Sink-or-swim is not a strategy for a $200K hire. It is an expensive way to pretend onboarding happened.
  5. Compliance is not onboarding. A laptop and a payroll form in week one is not integration.
  6. Your new executive can only drive change at the speed of acceptance, not the speed of their last job.
  7. Make the candidate write a 90-day plan before the final interview. It will be wrong. That is the point.
  8. Internal mentors stop working at the top because nobody makes themselves vulnerable with the person who could become their problem.
  9. Managing change is managing grief. Denial, bargaining, and acceptance all show up inside your org chart.
  10. Eight months, not 90 days, is when a senior hire actually feels like they belong.

Sound Bites

“When you’re coming in from the outside, almost nobody says, ‘We want you to keep doing the same thing your predecessor did.‘” (@00:14:58) — Steve Moss

“Even this very senior person is a work in progress, and they need help.” (@00:19:00) — Steve Moss

“How long does your onboarding last? 53% say a week or shorter.” (@00:34:17) — Steve Moss

“After an eight month process, people feel like they’re in their groove.” (@00:36:29) — Steve Moss

“It’s good counsel for someone to be quieter, to use the two ears instead of the one mouth.” (@00:51:23) — Steve Moss

About This Episode

Steve Moss is the founder and president of Executive Springboard, a network of current and former C-suite executives who mentor newly placed leaders through their first eight months in a new role. Before founding Executive Springboard, Steve spent his corporate career as a marketing executive in global organizations, including CMO roles at the Pillsbury–Nestle ice cream joint venture and Imation, the publicly traded 3M spin-off in digital storage. His firm has vetted around 90 mentors across 20 functional areas and a dozen countries, and reports a 95% retention rate over 18 months for the executives they support. Steve connects to the iBD canon because the executive bench is where most owner-operators get stuck on the way out of the seat.

Resources Mentioned

  • Executive Springboard — Steve’s mentoring firm for newly placed C-suite executives. — execspringboard.com
  • Steve Moss on LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/stephenfmoss
  • Leadership IQ study — Referenced for the top five reasons executives fail in new roles.
  • Kevin Cashman (Korn Ferry) — Referenced for the definition of leadership as “authentic self-expression.”
  • Kübler-Ross change curve — Referenced for the framework that managing change is managing grief.
  • Vistage / Allied Executives / EO — Referenced as peer-group options for senior leaders.

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