We love track records. They make us feel safe.
When a candidate has led similar teams, in the same industry, with measurable success, the logic is irresistible: If they’ve done it before, they can do it again.
But leadership is not a copy-paste exercise. What worked brilliantly in one system may fail quietly in another. In fact, the more a leader’s success depends on a specific context, the higher the risk when that context changes.
The Comfort of Predictability
Boards and hiring committees often look for patterns: growth delivered, teams built, crises managed. But patterns can create blind spots. They reward consistency over adaptability, and familiarity over learning agility.
A proven record can disguise context-dependent competence – skills that work only under familiar dynamics, cultures, or governance models. These leaders thrive in ecosystems they understand but falter when the rules subtly shift.
A perfect fit for the past is rarely a good fit for what comes next.
The Real Question: What Made Them Succeed?
Most interviews focus on what someone achieved. Far fewer explore why those achievements were possible. Did they succeed because of their leadership? Or because they inherited a well-tuned organization? Were they an architect of results, or an accelerator of momentum already in motion?
In executive search, this distinction separates apparent success from transferable capability. Without that distinction, we risk hiring a reflection of yesterday’s wins rather than tomorrow’s leader.
Supporting Research
Leadership effectiveness is highly context-dependent.
A landmark study by Borwick & Kim (2017) found that executives transferring between different organizational environments experienced much higher failure rates, even with outstanding track records. More telling, context alignment explained more about performance than credentials alone.
Harvard Business School (2008) found that high-performing leaders often underperform after transitioning to new organizations – not because their skills vanish, but because success relies on a complex system of conditions: structures, incentives, and cultures that may not exist elsewhere.
Research by De Meuse and colleagues highlights a related point: learning agility, or the ability to adapt and build new capabilities, predicts executive success across contexts better than past achievements. Leaders who lack this trait are at greater risk when the environment shifts.
In short: Past success predicts very little without understanding the system it came from.
Real-World Example: Stephen Elop at Nokia
A striking real-world example of context-dependent leadership comes from Nokia’s high-profile appointment of Stephen Elop as CEO in 2010. Elop was recruited from Microsoft, bringing with him a formidable track record and experience in another tech giant. On paper, few candidates could boast better alignment: deep industry expertise, operational rigor, and a history of delivering results in complex environments.
Yet, success did not translate. Elop’s leadership approach – shaped in Microsoft’s software-centric, US-based culture – proved challenging in Nokia’s engineering-driven, Finnish context. The top-down management style and rapid strategy shift to Windows Phone conflicted with Nokia’s established culture. Despite substantial change and initial optimism, the company lost significant market share and was eventually acquired by Microsoft.
The lesson is clear: experience without diagnosing context is risky.
What This Means for Executive Hiring
In modern executive search, intelligence before process matters most.
Before we assess candidates, we must understand the system they’ll enter: its maturity, informal power structures, and hidden constraints. When organizations skip that step, they mistake similarity for suitability.
The best CVs rise to the top. And sometimes, so do the biggest mismatches.
Hiring for experience without diagnosing context is like prescribing treatment without a diagnosis.
A Better Question to Ask
Next time you meet an impressive candidate, ask:
“What conditions made your success possible, and which ones must be present for you to succeed again?”
Leaders who can answer with clarity are not just self-aware; they are system-aware. And that’s the kind of intelligence that actually translates.
References
- Harvard Business School, “Why Star Performers Fail” (2008)
- Borwick, R. & Kim, Y.J., “Predicting Executive Success Across Contexts” (2017)
- De Meuse, K.P. et al., ”Learning Agility: A Construct Whose Time Has Come” (2012)