How to define the right leadership requirement

The first job isn't finding the right person. It's making sure you're looking for the right person. Almost every search that goes wrong went wrong before anyone was approached.

A job description lists responsibilities. A brief explains what has to change, by when, and what the organisation will tolerate in order to get there. Only the second one can be tested against a candidate.

Four questions worth arguing about

What will be materially different in eighteen months if this appointment works? Who inside the business has to succeed for that to happen? What has been tried already, and why didn't it hold? And what would make a strong candidate turn this role down?

If a leadership team cannot answer those four consistently, the disagreement is theirs, not the market's — and it will surface as shortlist churn later.

Write the trade-offs down

Every senior brief contains a trade-off: sector knowledge against scale experience, transformation record against cultural fit, speed against certainty. Naming them at the outset turns a difficult decision at shortlist stage into a decision the group already made.

The requirement should also be allowed to change. Evidence gathered during a search is information, not an inconvenience; a brief that survives contact with the market unaltered was usually never tested against it.