90 Days Are Enough: How to Spot a Wrong Appointment Early

For the new head of production, you did everything right. A headhunter ran the search, you reviewed the documents, held two rounds of interviews and had the candidate go through an assessment. The candidate was convincing. Six months later, the mood on the shop floor is worse than before, delivery reliability is unchanged, and when you ask about progress you get the same answer as in month three: he is still settling in.

The case is not an exception. In our experience, roughly one in two appointments at the top management level does not meet the expectations placed in it. Reliable, publicly available statistics on this are scarce, and depending on what counts as failure, estimates vary widely. For the decision in your own company, the exact figure is secondary. What matters is that a wrong appointment is not a marginal risk but one that has to be planned for.

Why a better selection process does not solve the problem

The first reflex after a wrong appointment is to upgrade the process: one more interview, another assessment, a different headhunter. This hardly improves the hit rate. A selection process tests how someone presents themselves in an interview situation. Whether they are effective in your organisation, with your people and under your pressure only becomes clear in day-to-day work.

This does not mean that selection does not matter. It means that the weight has to be distributed differently: less effort on a supposedly perfect decision before someone joins, more clarity for the decision afterwards.

Four traits that count more than professional qualifications

Look at the careers of successful managing directors and you will find a surprising number who came from outside the field – natural scientists in mechanical engineering, humanities graduates in the service business. What they have in common is rarely their education, but a set of personality traits. We consider four of them decisive:

1. Energy. Not volume, but staying power: how quickly does someone give up when things get difficult, and how consistently do they pursue a goal?
2. Ability to handle conflict. Every decision weighs advantages against disadvantages. You need managers who hold their own opinion and stand by a decision even in a headwind – without running their head against a wall.
3. Ability to learn. How steep is the learning curve? One indication is how often someone has worked their way into new fields. Twenty years of rising through the same company is something different from responsibility in two or three companies with different tasks.
4. Hands-on without vanity. In mid-sized companies, results count, not staging. What is needed is someone who rolls up their sleeves and steps into day-to-day business when necessary.

Questions that help in the interview

These traits cannot be tested directly, but they can be approximated. Questions that focus on results and self-assessment rather than the CV have proven useful:

• Which results can you look back on, and what was your personal contribution to them?
• Where do you see weaknesses in yourself?
• What have you understood about our starting position, and where would you set the focus?
• Why are you the right person for exactly this situation of the company?
• Which methods and tools do you use to achieve results?

Particularly revealing is asking the candidate to prepare, for the next meeting, the company’s key success factors from their own perspective. Anyone who does this carefully demonstrates ability to learn and energy at the same time.

The 90-day rule

Even with good questions, a risk remains. That is why the real test belongs at the start of the working relationship. Our experience is clear: 90 days are enough to judge whether a new manager meets expectations. Three criteria make this verifiable:

1. Decisions. There are decisions that have been properly prepared or already taken – with reasoning and alternatives.
2. Changes. First change processes have been launched, with owners and a timetable.
3. Quick wins. There are first visible results showing that work is heading in the right direction.

For the review to be fair, expectations must be agreed in writing when the person joins. And it has to take place: as a fixed date at the end of the third month, not as a feeling that sets in at some point.

If all three are missing after 90 days, “still settling in” is not an answer. Parting ways is then the better decision – bitter for everyone involved, but cheaper than two years of standstill. The employment law framework, such as probation periods and notice periods, differs between Switzerland and Germany and should be clarified in advance.

Better from within: the succession model

The most effective way to reduce the risk is to fill the top level from within the company wherever possible. Those who rise internally have already proven that they fit the culture and deliver results. The ideal looks like this:

• A management team with a sensible age structure, so that a change comes up every three to five years – not all at once.
• For every succession, three or four internal candidates are available to choose from.
• The candidates who are not chosen are told openly why the choice went another way, and they stay on board.
• External managers are deliberately recruited one level below, to bring new thinking into the company without taking the risk at the top.

This requires talent to be identified early and given tasks in which it can prove itself. Where this is missing, the only option at the top level is an external search – with the risk described at the outset.

Recommendation

Agree in writing with every new manager, before they join, how you will measure success after 90 days – decisions, changes, first results – and set the date straight away. In the selection process, test the four traits more deliberately than professional qualifications. And for every appointment you had to make externally, ask yourself why there was nobody internally.

Would you like to know whether your management team has the problem-solving capacity for the tasks ahead? The Quick Health Check takes five minutes to complete and shows which state your company is in and which fields of action offer the greatest leverage – as a five-page profile, reviewed by an experienced consultant and free of charge. Start the Quick Health Check.

This article is based on two chapters from “Erfolgreiche Arbeit in Aufsichtsgremien”, published by 10-P Consult in 2025.

Further articles:

Entrepreneurs within the Company (link)

The Leadership Control Loop: From Goal to Execution (link)

The Approval Catalogue: Which Decisions Should Not Stay with Management Alone (link)