In a crisis, the leadership question tends to arrive at the worst possible moment. A chief executive steps down without warning, a division loses its leader, or the team that built the business turns out not to be the team that can steer it through what has happened. The board has to act, often within days, and usually with less information than it would like.
I have advised chief executives through disaster recovery, consumer boycotts, turnarounds and acute reputational crises. The circumstances differ every time. The lessons recur.
First, separate what must be decided now
Not every decision in a crisis is urgent, although it can feel that way. The board's first task is to sort them: what must be settled this week, what can wait a month, and what should wait until the crisis has passed.
Who leads tomorrow morning. Someone must hold the organisation steady while the longer-term question is answered. Often the right answer is a trusted internal leader or an experienced interim, with a clear and time-limited mandate.
Who speaks. Staff, customers, regulators and the press need one consistent voice. Uncertainty about who is in charge does more damage than most bad news.
What can wait. A permanent appointment made in haste tends to solve the last problem rather than the next one. If the permanent decision can be taken in weeks rather than days, it usually should be.
Advice before appointment
The instinct under pressure is to hire. Sometimes the better first step is counsel: an independent view of whether the existing team can carry the organisation through, where the real gaps are, and what kind of leader the next phase will need.
A candid conversation at this stage costs little and can prevent an appointment that would have been expensive to reverse. It also gives the board something it rarely has in a crisis: a perspective from outside the room, with no stake in the outcome other than getting it right.
Hiring at speed without losing judgement
Define the mandate for the next phase, not the last one. The leader who would have been right a year ago may not be right now. Agree the three or four outcomes that matter most over the next eighteen months, and hire against those.
Look beyond the obvious names. The leaders best suited to a crisis have often faced one before, and many of them sit outside your sector. The strongest candidate may not be on anyone's list.
Keep it confidential. A search conducted in public adds uncertainty at exactly the moment the organisation needs less of it. The role should not be advertised, and every approach should be made discreetly.
Compress the process, not the assessment. Speed comes from preparation and access, not from skipping referencing or calibration. The cost of a poor appointment is greatest when the organisation is already under strain.
Support the appointment. A leader who arrives mid-crisis has no honeymoon. Agree the first ninety days before they start, and give them someone outside the reporting line to speak to candidly.
The value of having been here before
A crisis is, by definition, unfamiliar to the people living through it. Boards benefit from an adviser who has seen comparable situations and, where appropriate, from an introduction to a leader who has faced the same test and come through it.
If you are facing a leadership decision under pressure, I would be glad to discuss it, urgently and in confidence.