The situation
At first glance, there was alignment around the need to hire.
Everyone involved agreed that the business had reached a point where an additional senior figure was required, and there was no shortage of intent to move forward, which often creates a sense that the process should be relatively straightforward.
But as the conversations progressed, it became clear that while there was agreement on making an appointment, there wasn’t the same level of clarity around what that appointment was actually there to achieve.
Different people described the role in slightly different ways, sometimes subtly, sometimes more noticeably, and the emphasis tended to move depending on who you were speaking to.
It wasn’t immediately problematic, but there was a sense that the brief was forming as a collection of views rather than a single, defined position.
What wasn’t obvious
What sat behind it wasn’t disagreement in any overt sense.
It was more that each stakeholder was approaching the hire from their own perspective, often shaped by the part of the business they were closest to, and the challenges they were most focused on.
Those perspectives were all valid, but they weren’t always being brought together in a way that created a clear direction.
That tends to be where things become less clear, because the role can start to absorb multiple expectations, some of which sit comfortably together, and some of which don’t, without that being fully explored.
Over time, that can lead to a situation where the brief appears complete, but doesn’t quite hold together when tested against real candidates.
What we focused on
Rather than moving straight into search, we spent time understanding how each stakeholder viewed the role, what they were hoping it would solve, and where those views aligned or differed.
That meant having separate conversations to draw out those perspectives, followed by bringing them together in a way that made the differences clearer without forcing an immediate resolution.
From there, the focus shifted to defining what mattered most, what could be secondary, and what didn’t need to sit within the role at all, which allowed the brief to take a more coherent shape.
Once that was in place, the role became easier to articulate, and the conversation moved away from trying to satisfy multiple positions towards something more deliberate.
The outcome
The appointment benefited from that clarity.
There was a shared understanding of what the role was there to do, which made it easier to assess candidates against something consistent, rather than a moving set of expectations.
The process itself was more straightforward, decisions were made with greater confidence, and candidates experienced a clearer sense of what the role involved.
The individual who joined stepped into a position that had been properly thought through, which made it easier for them to establish themselves and operate effectively from the outset.
The TWYD view
Situations like this are often approached as a search problem, when in practice they tend to be an alignment one.
The assumption is that the right individual will bring clarity once they are in place, but where expectations differ, that clarity has to come beforehand.
In this case, progress came from recognising that the role wasn’t undefined, it was over-defined in different directions, which made it difficult to resolve until those perspectives were brought together.
That tends to be the point where things become simpler. Not by adding more detail, but by deciding what actually matters most.