Peter Smith: How a Leadership Hire Can Make or Break a Company

In his latest column, Smith provides a list of questions every business needs to be asking their next potential leader.

Peter Smith is an industry consultant, speaker, sales trainer, and author. He can be reached via email at TheRetailSmiths@gmail.com.

The recent news that Gina Drosos was departing Signet Jewelers got me thinking about the impact a single hire can have on the trajectory of a business.

While those effects are not confined solely to leadership, there can be little doubt that the top position in any company can define a business for years, either positively or negatively.

The Drosos story will, I expect, be better understood with the passage of time.

She appears to have righted a ship that struggled to navigate internal cultural challenges for years and must be given credit for the company’s outstanding performance amidst the global pandemic, when shopping malls contracted from 1,000 or so to a number fast approaching 400.

Whether it was a good idea for Signet to embrace lab-grown diamonds at a time when mall traffic is in decline (“lower average ticket” plus “fewer unit sales”) is a question worth asking.

With PetSmart’s J.K. Symancyk announced as Drosos’ replacement, it is also reasonable to ask, why was no succession plan in place? How does a company of that size not have a core base of executives from which a new CEO might emerge?

While the comings and goings of key personnel at $7 billion companies will always make headlines, there are, of course, less celebrated announcements that happen throughout the jewelry business on a regular basis.

To the companies making these hires, each one is just as important as the changes at Signet.

Every key hire brings with it the promise, or at least the hope, of a better path for the hiring company and a renewed optimism that the arriving leader can chart a better course.

In some cases, the new hire arrives because a once-relevant business has lost its way, perhaps even been passed by in the industry, and the seemingly Sisyphean task of getting things turned around lives and dies with a succession of executive hires and their attempted resuscitations.

In other instances, the business might be suffering from the “curse of the entrepreneur,” a condition in which the qualities that were so critical in founding the company (courage, creativity, innovation, risk-tolerance, etc.) give way to different needs as the business matures.

The founder continues to dream big when what’s really needed is a steady hand and the often-boring work of structure, discipline, and consistency.

“If you insist on equating tenure as a guarantee of competency, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.”— Peter Smith

In making senior hires, companies seem to have a default position that a given candidate must be qualified and competent based purely on the strength of them having served in a similar capacity with another organization in our space.

Experience and proximity somehow morph into perceived competency, often with little underlying justification.

So, if you find yourself thinking about making an important executive hire, don’t accept empty platitudes and euphemisms about their capabilities and accomplishments.

Challenge the default position that they must necessarily be good because they previously worked at company X or Y for years.

The possibility that they may have sucked in that job rarely enters the equation in our haste to see what we want to see. And if you insist on equating tenure as a guarantee of competency, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.

There are no shortcuts to understanding whether someone might be right for your business or not, but such an important decision ought to warrant a serious exploration of suitability in terms of both competence and cultural fit. The latter, I should point out, is no less important than capability.

A few questions to augment your work on assessing the candidate might include the following:

“What are you most proud of in your last position? Walk me through why that is and how you got there.”

In answering those questions, are they talking about the Big Rocks, the things that make the most difference in the business?

Are they pointing to something tangible that led to sales and profitability growth?

Do they give you examples of specifics that suggest veracity in their answers?

Another important question might be, “What is your vision for this brand? And can you give me a sense for what the roadmap might look like?”

Does the answer suggest the candidate has given real thought to what your brand is about?

Do they get the essence of what you believe your brand means, and does the answer promise a path that is feasible, or are they filling space with empty platitudes?