Executive Search and Technology Leadership Insights for Modern Organisations

When your business faces a critical inflection point, whether it’s a digital transformation, a turnaround, or a scale-up that has just secured funding, you can’t afford 12 months of drift. Spending that time recruiting, onboarding, and hoping the new hire finds their feet will only slow you down. What you need is precision. What you need is fractional firepower.

Mis-hiring is the silent landmine beneath your high-performing team. It’s not just a bad hire. It’s a culture destabiliser. A trust eroder. A progress killer. It may feel safe to chalk it up as “just one wrong person,” but recent data suggests the financial and relational toll is far heavier. A mis-hire can cost up to 30 % of the employee’s first-year earnings, including lost productivity, recruitment, onboarding, and disruption. So when an executive does not fit and the crac

What’s 2+2 in leadership hiring? The answer isn’t always 4. Especially when you forget to account for the hidden variables: character and context. Almost 50–70% of new executives fail within 18 months, not for lack of skill but because hiring often overlooks character, cultural fit, and adaptability. We often think of hiring as a simple maths problem. You line up competence with experience and expect to find your next great leader. Except it rarely works out that neatly.

Are you hiring for comfort or for progress? It’s an easy trap to fall into. You sit across from a candidate who reminds you of yourself ten years ago.  Or maybe they mirror someone on your team who’s been successful. They “just feel right.” That’s the comfort zone of culture fit. It feels safe. It feels smooth. But here’s the risk: If everyone looks the same, thinks the same, and solves problems the same way, fresh ideas never surface.

Boardrooms no longer set the pace, the market does. Strategy now starts at the exact moment your product (or service) fails to meet the mark: the unrenewed contract, the frustrated customer call, the competitor who closes the deal you were sure was yours. The companies winning today anchor every decision, investment, and hire around their product’s ability to deliver value that customers can feel and measure.

The champagne glasses were still clinking when the cracks began to show. A star executive had been hired at lightning speed, hailed as the catalyst for change. Within half a year, departments were working at cross purposes, key metrics were falling like dominoes, and the exit package was costing more than the company’s last major project. So the real question for leaders is this: does moving fast on hiring truly put you ahead, or does it quietly set you back months and mil

The executive mirage is what happens when we confuse presence with potential. It’s the polished speech, the poised manner, the confident stride into the boardroom that convinces us we’re looking at a high-impact leader. Traditionally, these signals have been held up as markers of leadership. Commanding tone. Sharp delivery. Decisiveness in meetings. These behaviours feel reassuring, especially under pressure.

Something that I firmly believe is an investment for any company's future is leadership development. As you will go on to read, I'm clearly not alone in that opinion. It’s common sense that training people to be better, more diligent, more focused and finding gaps in their skills is always a positive thing. It's also one of the first things to go when budget constraints are required. So, the big question: is leadership development really worth the money?

Imagine a busy international airport suddenly losing its air traffic controller. Planes are circling, communication is strained, and there’s a very real risk of collision. Who steps in? Not someone you’ll hire after six months of interviews… but a seasoned professional who can slot in now, restore order, and keep everything safely moving. Interim leaders are your organisational air traffic controllers, parachuting in when the stakes are high and time is tight.

We all know the phrase “culture fit”... it’s been baked into hiring decisions for decades. But here’s an uncomfortable truth, when overused or misunderstood, cultural fit can become a Trojan horse for unconscious bias. And the result? Leadership teams filled with people who look, think, and lead a lot like… well, you. That’s not cultural alignment. That’s cultural stagnation.

Over the years, I’ve seen plenty of leadership teams that look great on paper, strong CVs, strategic minds, ambitious plans. And yet… performance still drags. It’s a bit like driving a high-spec sports car with the handbrake half on. You can move forward, but the engine’s straining, the wheels don’t spin freely, and sooner or later, something burns out. So what’s holding these teams back?

Let’s talk about Diversity and Inclusion. I know, for some, it might feel like a term that had its moment a few years back. Maybe you're tired of hearing about it. Maybe you even think it's become too political. But here's the thing… Regardless of your personal beliefs, one principle remains undeniably true…  Everyone deserves an equal opportunity based on their individual merit, not on gender, race, or political leaning.