My New Executive Isn't Working Out. How Soon Should I Replace Them?
- Philip Lamb
- Aug 4
- 6 min read
If you are reading this, you already know the answer. Nobody searches this question casually. You have watched the meetings, you have heard what your people are not saying out loud, and somewhere around month five you stopped telling yourself it was a ramp-up problem.
So let us skip the part where we ask whether it is really that bad. In more than 30 years of retained search, we have almost never seen a company move too early on a senior leader who was not working. We have seen dozens move too late. The typical pattern is that a CEO knows by month four, tells the board at month nine, and acts at month fourteen, and by then the damage is not the executive, it is the two good people underneath who left while everyone waited.
PRL International is a retained executive search firm serving Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, specializing in senior-level placements in energy, manufacturing, and mid-market companies. Here is how we would think about the decision and, more importantly, what to do before you run the replacement search.
How Do You Know It Is Time to Replace an Executive Instead of Coaching Them?
You coach a skill gap and you replace a judgment gap, because skills can be taught on your timeline but judgment, credibility, and trust cannot. That is the whole test, and it cuts cleanly. A CFO who does not yet know your ERP system has a skill gap. A CFO whose numbers you have started double-checking has a judgment gap. The first is a training plan. The second is a search.
The research backs the distinction. Leadership IQ's study of more than 5,000 hiring managers found that 46 percent of new hires fail within 18 months, and 89 percent of those failures were for attitudinal reasons rather than a lack of technical skill. People rarely wash out because they could not do the work. They wash out over coachability, temperament, and how they handle being wrong. Those are not things a development plan fixes in a quarter.
What you are seeing | What it usually is | The move |
Does not know your systems, market, or product yet | Skill gap, normal at month three | Coach, with a dated plan |
Slow to build relationships across functions | Ramp, if it is improving | Coach, watch closely |
You have started verifying their work | Judgment gap | Replace |
Your best people are quietly asking about them | Credibility gone | Replace |
Blames the team, the market, or the last guy | Attitudinal, the 89 percent | Replace |
You dread the meeting where they present | Trust gone | Replace |
The honest gut check we give clients is this. If this person walked in tomorrow and resigned, would your first feeling be panic or relief? If it is relief, you have already made the decision and you are only negotiating the timeline with yourself.
Bad news isn't wine. It doesn't improve with age.
Colin Powell said that about information, but it is truer about people decisions than almost anything else in business. Every month you wait, the cost compounds in ways that never show up on the invoice.
How Soon Is Too Soon to Replace a New Executive?
Ninety days is too soon to judge results but it is not too soon to judge trajectory, and the honest window for a senior leader is six to nine months. Before six months you are usually looking at ramp, not fit, and pulling the trigger there often means you misjudged the onboarding rather than the person. After nine months, if the trajectory has not turned, waiting longer almost never changes the outcome, it just adds cost.
Gartner research has found that 40 to 50 percent of executives fail within their first 18 months. That number is worth sitting with, because it tells you that if this happened to you, you are not an outlier and you did not necessarily do anything unusual. It also tells you the failure window is long enough that plenty of companies spend a full year hoping.
One practical note that companies forget in the moment. If you used a retained firm, check your engagement letter. Most include a replacement guarantee, commonly 90 days to a year, and the clock and the conditions matter. We wrote about what those clauses actually cover in what should be in a retained executive search contract. If you are inside the window, that is a conversation to have this week, not next quarter.
What Should You Do Before You Start the Replacement Search?
Before you run the second search, you have to answer why the first one failed, because if you skip that step you will hire the same person with a different name. This is the part almost everyone rushes, and it is the single biggest reason companies get burned twice on the same seat.
Ask four questions honestly. Was the role itself defined correctly, or did you write a job description for a person rather than a problem? Did the person fail, or did the conditions fail them, meaning no authority, no budget, a peer who undermined them, or a mandate that changed after they accepted? Did your process actually test for the thing that broke, since most processes test competence and most failures are about judgment and fit? And did anyone tell them the truth early, or did they find out at month ten that they had been failing since month three?
That last one matters more than people admit. Roughly half of executive failures trace back to culture and integration rather than capability, which is a finding Egon Zehnder has documented and which matches what we see in the field. Sometimes the honest answer is that the hire was fine and the onboarding was the failure, which is a different problem with a different fix. We covered that in why new executives fail in their first 90 days. If you diagnose it as a bad hire when it was actually a bad landing, you will keep replacing good people.
How Do You Replace Them Without Repeating the Mistake?
You replace them by separating the two clocks: the clock on covering the seat, and the clock on making the right permanent hire. Those are different problems and trying to solve both with one fast decision is how you end up here a second time. Cover the seat with an interim or a bridge, then run a proper search on a real timeline.
The math justifies the discipline. The Center for American Progress found that replacing a senior executive can run as high as 213 percent of that person's annual salary once you count lost productivity, disruption, and the cost of the second search. On a $250,000 executive that is more than half a million dollars, and you have now spent it once. Spending it twice because you rushed is a far more expensive mistake than three extra months of search. We laid out the full number in what it really costs to make the wrong executive hire.
Three things change on the second search. Rebuild the spec around the problem you now understand rather than the one you thought you had, because you know this seat far better than you did a year ago. Fix the part of your process that missed it, which usually means real reference work rather than the two names the candidate offered, something we walk through in what references you should actually check. And give the search the runway it needs, since a senior search that is run properly takes months, as we covered in how long executive search actually takes.
If you need coverage while you do this right, a bridge is a legitimate tool and not an admission of failure, though it is not a substitute for the permanent decision. That distinction is the whole argument in fractional executive versus permanent hire. And if the seat is already empty because they resigned before you acted, the speed playbook is in how to replace a C-suite executive fast.
The uncomfortable truth is that a search firm makes money either way when you replace someone. That is exactly why you should ask the one they will not volunteer: was it the person, or was it the seat? A firm that will only sell you a second search and never question the role definition is selling you the same failure at full price. That question is worth more to you than the résumés, and it is the reason a retained search partner should be arguing with you about the spec before they ever show you a candidate.
If you are ready to fill a senior role or want to talk through your search, reach out at prlinternational.com/contact
Want to know what questions to ask before hiring a search firm? Download the free 7-Question Guide: https://prl-proposal.vercel.app/guide
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