If your company is on the fence about whether to stick with its current CEO or begin the process of finding a new one, you may be thinking that one reason to keep the current CEO on is that he or she has a long tenure with the company. Companies often decide to take the path of least resistance when it comes to underperforming employees who have been with the organization a long time, assuming that their experience will lead to better outcomes than hiring a new person to fill the same role.
However, many business experts agree that tenure is not necessarily a good measure of an executive's potential to perform well for your company. According to Dr. John Sullivan, writing for ERE.net, studies have shown that CEO performance actually declines as time spent with a company increases. Some possible causes of this phenomenon are that executives feel more comfortable slacking once they have a few years at a certain company under their belt, or that they burn out in the first few years and have to spend the next few recovering.
Innovation can also be harmed by keeping the same people on your team for too long. If your organization has been floundering due to lack of creative direction, it may be because the same leaders have been in place too long. If you find that your company's executives tend to pointlessly uphold the status quo rather than looking for new ways to improve the functioning of the company, it may be time to bring in some fresh talent to get a new perspective on the situation. For this purpose, it's a good idea to hire an executive search firm to find exactly the kind of innovators you're looking for.
In an ideal situation, the sitting CEO is helping to bring in their replacement. However, if the CEO and the board already have a tense relationship, an executive search firm can be hired to start a search confidentially, finding and introducing the new person without any gaps in having a CEO at the company.
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