Why the best exec hires start with the work the company needs next.
Almost every month, I hear some version of the same exec hiring story from CEOs. The titles change. The pattern doesn't.
In one version, a leader is hired for big ideas and a sharp strategic read, into a role where the work is execution: being in the details, holding people accountable, getting things over the finish line. Six months in, there are plenty of plans and not much is moving.
The other version is the mirror image. A leader is hired for extremely high output, into a role where the work is figuring out what the right work is. There's a new rollout every few weeks, and nobody stops to ask whether any of it fits a company moving this fast.
Opposite wiring. Same root cause. And neither would have shown up in an interview.
The lens
The lens I use for this is Lencioni's Working Genius. It breaks work into six stages: Wonder (asking what's possible), Invention (creating ideas), Discernment (judging which ideas are right), Galvanizing (rallying people), Enablement (getting the work done alongside others), and Tenacity (pushing it over the finish line). Everyone has two geniuses (where they get energy and joy), two competencies, and two frustrations.
Run those two hires back through it. The first leader's geniuses lived at the top, in Wonder and Invention, in a role that was almost all Enablement and Tenacity. The second lived at the bottom, in Enablement and Tenacity, in a role that needed Wonder and Discernment. Each one was hired straight into their frustrations.
Why the interview didn't catch it
This is where I part ways with Lencioni a little. He says most people aren't very skilled in their frustrations. Senior execs are. They got where they are because they can flex across all six stages, so they interview well for almost anything. Most searches look through a domain lens ("they've run this playbook before"), and on that lens, both of these hires looked great.
The cost shows up after onboarding. Procrastination on the work that drains them. Quiet resentment. Burnout. It's fine for a while, until it isn't.
The obvious answer is to hire someone who can do all six. They can do all six. Nobody brings energy to all six. A high-velocity company needs someone who loves the specific work in front of it, so hire for how they'll anchor to the work, not just whether they've done it before.
Hire for the work the company needs next
This is the part that's bigger than the individual. At 10X CEO, every CEO names one primary constraint each quarter (the one obstacle between the company and its next level) and the two or three leveraged priorities that unlock it. Those priorities demand specific stages of work. That's what the next hire has to love doing.
Most searches start from the title and the last person's job description instead. A great exec in the wrong work isn't just an individual problem. It's a stalled constraint, missed priorities, and another search.
The team, and the CEO, shape every hire
Almost every team map I build shows magnetism: teams cluster around the work they were built to do. Across our network, Discernment is the most common genius on exec teams and Wonder is the rarest. That's usually on purpose. But the rare Wonder genius on a team like that often gets read as impatient or indecisive, when they're actually doing the context-setting work nobody else wants to do. That's what happens to the hire who brings the missing genius.
The CEO is part of the pattern too. I ran my intuition against the Working Genius profiles we track for the CEOs in our network:
76% (!!) have Galvanizing as a genius, and the most common pairing by a mile is Discernment and Galvanizing: make the call, then rally people around it.
70% list Enablement as a frustration.
About half list Wonder as a frustration.
None of that surprised me. The CEO job rewards people who can decide and get a room moving, and it's a big part of why our CEOs are as good as they are. But the CEO is an amplifier. Left to instinct, CEOs hire people who sound like them. The best key hires complement the CEO and fit the constraint.
Five moves for your next exec search
There's no perfect Working Genius profile for any role (I say this in every session). But there's almost always a gap, and it's knowable before the first candidate call:
Define the work, not the title. Start from the company's primary constraint and the priorities that unlock it. What stages of work do they demand, and what will AI carry?
Map the team they're joining, CEO included. Where does the team's energy pull, and where does it push away? Where's the gap?
Hire for the gap, or borrow it. Not every gap needs a hire. Sometimes it's a system, a resequenced agenda, or an outside voice in the room.
Interview for energy. Ask: if you could only do one of these stages all day for six months, which would it be? Listen for what drains them, not what they can do.
Set the hire up to be different. Tell the team why this person was hired, so the missing genius isn't read as friction in the first 90 days.
