The Most Expensive Org Chart

Growth slows. So you hire a CRO.

Forecasting gets harder. The finance function needs more weight. Bring in a CFO.

Execution starts slipping between teams. Maybe it's time for a COO.

Then technology becomes strategic. People complexity catches up. Another box appears. Then another.

None of those decisions are obviously wrong. That's the problem.

Each one can make perfect sense in isolation. But a leadership team is not built in isolation.

I've seen companies solve executive needs the same way they solve operational fires:

• Something hurts.
• Put someone senior on it.
• Then something else hurts.
• Do it again.

A few cycles later, you can have a very capable, very expensive executive team and still feel like the business is harder to run than it should be.

• The CEO is still connecting functions.
• Priorities still collide.
• Decisions still travel uphill.

Only now there are more senior people, more expertise, more priorities, and more dependencies to coordinate.

That doesn't mean the CFO was the wrong hire. Or the CRO. Or the COO.

Sometimes the permanent executive is exactly right.

I think the mistake happens before that decision.

We ask, "What executive do we need?"

Too early.

The better question is, "What does the business need to accomplish next?"

Then: what capabilities does that actually require?

Because those are not always the same thing as another permanent seat.

• Sometimes the company absolutely needs the executive.
• Sometimes it needs the capability now, but not necessarily forever.
• Sometimes two or three functions have to move together before hiring any one of them fixes much.
• And sometimes what looks like a leadership gap is really an operating-model problem wearing a leadership title.

That's a big part of the thinking behind ExecPods.

Start with the outcome. Work backward to the capabilities. Then decide what executive coverage actually makes sense.

Not the other way around.

I'm curious where other founders, operators, and investors land on this:

Where do growing companies get executive hiring wrong most often?

• Hiring too quickly?
• Waiting too long?
• Or hiring good individual executives without thinking enough about how the leadership team needs to work together?