The situation
In this case, the focus had already moved on from the individual.
A senior hire had been made with high expectations, and it hadn’t worked out, although the way it was described tended to stay at a fairly surface level. It was framed as something that hadn’t quite come together, a sense that they weren’t the right fit, and a desire to move forward and get the next one right.
There was a degree of frustration, which is understandable, but also a quiet urgency to replace the role and regain momentum.
At the same time, the role itself still needed to exist. The business hadn’t outgrown the need for it, even if the first attempt hadn’t delivered what was expected.
So the conversation quickly moved towards what came next, without spending much time on what had actually happened.
What wasn’t obvious
What sat behind it wasn’t just a question of whether the individual had been right or wrong.
It was more a question of how the role had been defined in the first place, how expectations had been set, and how the business had been set up to support that appointment, none of which had been fully revisited.
There was a tendency to describe the outcome in general terms, which made it easier to move on, but left a number of assumptions untested.
That’s often where these situations become difficult, because without a clearer understanding of what didn’t work, it’s easy to default to finding a stronger individual, rather than looking at whether the role and environment were set up in a way that allowed someone to succeed.
What we focused on
Rather than moving straight into replacing the individual, we spent time understanding how the original appointment had been approached, how the role had been described, and how it had actually played out in practice.
That meant speaking to different stakeholders to understand their expectations at the time, how those expectations had differed, and how the experience had been viewed from different perspectives.
It also meant looking at the environment the individual had stepped into, how decisions were made, and whether the business had been ready for the role it was trying to introduce.
As that came together, it became clearer where the gaps had been, not in a way that placed blame, but in a way that allowed the role to be redefined more realistically.
That changed the nature of the conversation, from replacing a person to resetting the conditions around the role itself.
The outcome
The eventual appointment benefited from that reset.
There was greater alignment around what the role was there to do, how it would operate within the business, and what success would look like over time.
The impact wasn’t immediate, but it was more stable. The new hire stepped into something that had been thought through more carefully, which allowed them to gain traction without having to work out the fundamentals as they went.
Confidence in the role began to rebuild, and the business was able to move forward without the same level of uncertainty that had surrounded the previous appointment.
The TWYD view
What tends to happen in these situations is that the outcome is treated as a hiring mistake, when in reality it’s often a definition issue that only becomes visible once someone is in place.
Replacing the individual without revisiting that tends to recreate the same conditions, just with a different person.
In this case, progress came from treating the failed hire as a point of insight rather than something to move past quickly, which made it possible to be more precise about what the role needed to be.
That tends to be the difference. Not finding a better individual, but creating a clearer context for them to operate in.