insights

Finding the Right Leader in a World That Won’t Stop Changing

Executive leadership has changed. The way we search for it has to change, too.

Five years ago, defining the executive you needed was usually straightforward. You looked for someone with a strong track record, good judgment, the right industry experience, and a leadership style that fit the organization.

Today, that’s simply not enough.

Think about what leaders have had to navigate in just the last five years: a global pandemic, supply chain disruptions no one saw coming, trade wars and changing tariffs, economic uncertainty, shifting workforce expectations, and now artificial intelligence changing how work gets done almost overnight.

Any one of those challenges could have tested a leadership team. Together, they’ve completely changed what it means to be the “right” executive.

At Dawson & Dawson, this is a conversation we have every day. We’re not just asking, “Can this person do the job?” We’re asking a much more important question:

Can this person lead this organization through what it is facing right now and where it needs to go next?

And increasingly, that question is becoming harder to answer.

Executive Search Has Never Been Riskier

Leadership turnover is happening at a remarkable pace and the numbers show just how much expectations at the top are shifting.

Leadership Turnover Snapshot	2025 Data	What It Suggests
Global CEO departures in 2025	234	Second consecutive year of record-high CEO turnover.
Increase from 2024	16%	Turnover accelerated again year over year.
Above the 8-year average	21%	The current level is well above the recent norm.
Average CEO tenure	7.1 years	Down from 8.3 years in 2021.
Turnover at top-performing S&P 500 companies	7% → 12%	Even successful organizations are deciding they need different leadership.
External CEO hires	18% → 33%	Nearly doubled year over year; highest share in eight years.

Sources: Russell Reynolds Associates — Global CEO Turnover Index  |  The Conference Board / Egon Zehnder / Semler Brossy

What’s especially interesting is that companies aren’t only replacing struggling leaders. In many cases, boards aren’t saying, “This leader failed.” They’re saying, “The business has changed, and we need something different now.”

More organizations are also looking outside because they don’t believe the leadership they need for the next chapter is necessarily already sitting inside the company.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

Of course, making the wrong executive hire has always been expensive. Once you add up compensation, severance, lost productivity, disruption to the leadership team, employee turnover, missed opportunities, and the cost of starting the search all over again, a failed executive hire can easily cost far more than that leader’s annual salary.

But the financial cost is only part of it. A leadership mismatch can slow decision-making, shake confidence across the organization, damage culture, and cause a company to lose valuable ground while everyone waits for the situation to get resolved.

And sometimes, the problem isn’t really the person who was hired. It’s that the organization wasn’t clear enough about what it actually needed before the search began.

Board Readiness Snapshot	Finding	Why It Matters
CEO succession planning	Ranked #1	The board practice directors say most needs improvement heading into 2026.
Strong confidence in collective board skill set	About one-third	Most directors are not highly confident the board has every capability it needs.
Concern about capabilities for the year ahead	14%	A meaningful group believes their board is missing needed skills.

Source: National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), most recent board survey referenced in the article.

That doesn’t sound like a simple talent shortage. It sounds like organizations are struggling to define what kind of leadership they need before they go looking for it.

And Then There’s AI

Artificial intelligence has added another layer to an already complicated leadership equation. Leaders are being asked to move quickly, but thoughtfully,  and boards and management teams are not always aligned on what that should look like.

AI & Leadership Readiness	Data Point	What It Means
CEO confidence in 12-month revenue growth	30%	Down from 56% three years earlier.
Companies reporting tangible AI results	About 3 in 10	Most organizations still have not translated AI into clear business results.
Growth gap for cautious organizations	2 percentage points slower	A wait-and-see approach may carry a competitive cost.
Profit-margin gap for cautious organizations	3 points lower	More dynamic organizations are seeing stronger economics.
CEOs who say boards are pushing AI faster than the organization is ready for	61%	Boards may be moving faster than execution capacity.
CEOs who say boards lack an informed view of AI’s impact on growth strategy	Nearly 40%	Leadership teams may be facing pressure without enough strategic alignment.
Directors saying AI will factor into 2026 growth strategy	76%	AI is now a mainstream board priority, even as measurable results remain uneven.

Sources: PwC — 29th Global CEO Survey  |  Boston Consulting Group — Split Decisions  |  NACD

So, what does that look like inside an organization?

Sometimes the CEO is hesitant to change, and the board knows the company needs someone willing to push harder. Sometimes the board wants to move quickly, but the leadership team doesn’t yet have the people, systems, or infrastructure to make it happen.

And sometimes everyone agrees the company needs to modernize, but no one is quite sure how to tell whether a candidate truly understands AI and transformation or simply knows how to talk about it in an interview.

Those are three very different leadership challenges. And a résumé isn’t going to tell you which one you’re solving for.

Finding the Right Fit, Not Just the Right Résumé

This is where we believe executive search has to go deeper.

A strong résumé tells you where someone has been. It tells you what they’ve accomplished, the companies they’ve worked for, the teams they’ve led, and the results they’ve delivered. All those matters.

But it doesn’t automatically tell you whether that person is the right leader for your company, your people, and the challenges sitting in front of you today.

That’s why we spend so much time on discovery before we ever begin recruiting.

We want to understand the business. The culture. The leadership team. The challenges. The opportunities. The appetite for change. The personalities involved. And, just as importantly, where the friction already exists.

Because context changes everything.

A company coming out of a difficult period may need a steady, trusted leader who can rebuild confidence and bring people together. Another company may need someone who is comfortable challenging the status quo, making difficult decisions, and moving an organization forward faster than it might naturally want to go.

Both can be exceptional executives. But they are not necessarily the same executive.

That same discovery process helps us look at AI readiness more realistically. Rather than asking whether a candidate is “comfortable with AI,” we want to understand how that person has actually managed change.

What did they introduce?	Why did they introduce it?
How did they get people on board?	What resistance did they face?
What worked — and what didn’t?	What did they learn along the way?

Because being an AI-ready leader isn’t about knowing every new platform or having the latest technology vocabulary. It’s about being able to make good decisions when the answers aren’t obvious. It’s knowing when to move, when to slow down, how to bring people along, and how to turn new capabilities into something that actually improves the business.

That kind of judgment doesn’t show up neatly on a résumé. You have to know how to uncover it.

We won’t walk through every detail of our search methodology here. The most important parts of executive search are nuanced, relationship-driven, and difficult to reduce to a checklist.

We believe discovery is one of the most important parts of the entire search process, not just a formality before recruiting begins.

Why Dawson & Dawson

The companies that navigate the next five years successfully probably won’t be the ones that somehow avoid disruption. They’ll be the ones with leaders who know how to move through change without losing sight of the people responsible for making that change happen. Finding that kind of leader takes more than a job description. And it takes more than searching a database for the right keywords. It takes understanding where your organization is today, where you want it to go, what may be standing in the way, and what kind of person can realistically help you get there. That’s the work we do at Dawson & Dawson. Sometimes the most important part of an executive search happens before you ever start looking for the executive.

If your organization is facing an important leadership transition or you’re beginning to question whether the executive profile you’ve defined truly reflects what your organization needs right now we’d welcome the conversation.

Click Here to Connect With Us