Deloitte Insights delivers proprietary research designed to help organizations turn their aspirations into action.

DELOITTE INSIGHTS

  • Home
  • Spotlight
    • Weekly Global Economic Outlook
    • Top 10 Reading Guide
    • Fostering Well-Being
    • Cyber Risk
    • Resilience
  • Topics
    • Strategy
    • Economy & Society
    • Operations
    • Workforce
    • Technology
  • Industries
    • Consumer
    • Energy, Resources, & Industrials
    • Financial Services
    • Government & Public Services
    • Life Sciences & Health Care
    • Technology, Media & Telecom
  • More from Deloitte Insights
    • About
    • Deloitte Insights Magazine
    • Press Room Podcasts
Deloitte.com
Deloitte Insights logo
  • SPOTLIGHT
    • Weekly Global Economic Outlook
    • Top 10 Reading Guide
    • Fostering Well-Being
    • Cyber Risk
    • Resilience
  • TOPICS
    • Strategy
    • Economy & Society
    • Operations
    • Workforce
    • Technology
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Consumer
    • Energy, Resources, & Industrials
    • Financial Services
    • Government & Public Services
    • Life Sciences & Health Care
    • Technology, Media & Telecom
  • MORE FROM DELOITTE INSIGHTS
    • About
    • Deloitte Insights Magazine
    • Press Room Podcasts
  • Welcome!

    For personalized content and settings, go to you My Deloitte Dashboard

    Latest Insights

    In a competitive labor market for retail workers, sustainability programs could give employers an edge

    Article
     • 
    5-min read

    A framework for managing an extended and connected workforce

    Article
     • 
    2-min read

    Recommendations

    Government Trends 2023

    Article

    Navigating toward a new normal: 2023 Deloitte corporate travel study

    Article
     • 
    17-min read

    About Deloitte Insights

    About Deloitte Insights

    Deloitte Insights Magazine, Issue 31

    Magazine

    Press Room Podcasts

    Podcasts

    Topics for you

    • Business Strategy & Growth
    • Leadership
    • Operations
    • Marketing & Sales
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Emerging Technologies
    • Economy

    Watch & Listen

    Dbriefs

    Stay informed on the issues impacting your business with Deloitte's live webcast series. Gain valuable insights and practical knowledge from our specialists while earning CPE credits.

    Deloitte Insights Podcasts

    Join host Tanya Ott as she interviews influential voices discussing the business trends and challenges that matter most to your business today. 

    Subscribe

    Deloitte Insights Newsletters

    Looking to stay on top of the latest news and trends? With MyDeloitte you'll never miss out on the information you need to lead. Simply link your email or social profile and select the newsletters and alerts that matter most to you.

Welcome back

Still not a member? Join My Deloitte

Executive transitions: The perils of the "rescue fantasy"

by Ajit Kambil
  • Save for later
  • Share
    • Share on Facebook
    • Share on Twitter
    • Share on Linkedin
    • Share by email
17 September 2014

Executive transitions: The perils of the "rescue fantasy"

18 September 2014
  • Ajit Kambil United States
  • Save for later
  • Share
    • Share on Facebook
    • Share on Twitter
    • Share on Linkedin
    • Share by email

While there are no fixed and simple answers to decisions pertaining to people, knowing critical trade-offs and a process to engage them may help you better navigate these decisions.

Decisions pertaining to people are among the hardest tasks confronting new or incoming executives. Time and again, new executives look back on the first year of their new roles and tell us that their biggest regret was moving too slowly to resolve talent issues and get the right people in the right seats. One particular form of this regret is the time lost in trying to “rescue” key staff, only to find it was best to have replaced them.

In our labs, we find two common variations when an incoming executive is susceptible to the “rescue fantasy.” The first variation is when you have a very congenial and well-liked individual on the team who is not performing at the level required of them. Conversely, the second variation occurs where there is a talented individual who is good at their specialty or execution of projects, but does so in a manner inconsistent with the culture, teaming, and other norms you wish to establish in your organization. As rescue efforts do not always succeed and can be costly in terms of time and effort, you have to carefully assess the likelihood of success and trade off individual rescue efforts versus recruiting staff with the requisite skills and temperament to succeed in these roles. While there are no fixed and simple answers to decisions pertaining to people, knowing critical trade-offs and a process to engage them may help you better navigate these decisions.

Let’s hypothetically say you are a CFO with seven direct reports, and initially, you are confident five of them are capable of their roles. After a month or so of initial observations and a review of prior performance assessments, you are uncertain about two key reports. As a C-level executive, you will generally want all of your direct reports to consistently excel in their roles by the end of your first year. To achieve this, you need to   diagnose why you are not sure about the two individuals and then address the situation. For illustrative purposes, let us name the two problematic individuals Carol and David.

Diagnose the performance gaps

Before moving forward on talent decisions, the first step is to really diagnose the performance gaps. Carol is your congenial and well-liked tax director, but you have some serious concerns about her capability to frame and execute tax strategies that reduce the effective tax rate. She has been good at compliance, but you are not sure about her skills at leveraging legitimate tax strategies to add value to your company. David is your youngest direct report who is leading your key systems implementation and finance transformation project. In the first month and a half, you have already heard some noise from customers of finance about David, and observed some disrespectful behaviors to his peers in your team meetings. Carol’s gap appears to be a skill gap—to test this, you assign her a 45-day task to frame a tax strategy. David’s issues seem behavioral, so in addition to observing him more closely in the execution of your key finance transformation project, you conduct a 360 and informally get feedback from those involved in the project. Carefully crafted assignments, observations, and feedback from others can provide critical information to resolve doubts about competencies and capabilities.

To rescue or not to rescue

As a former tax director, you are disappointed with the plan Carol provides you, and there appears to be a competency gap. As the company is about to embark on a series of acquisitions, it is imperative to have a strategic tax director. You share your disappointment in the first plan, and ask her to come back with a revised overall tax strategy and an analysis of options for an upcoming merger. To help her improve, you connect her to a number of tax experts outside the company—some from your personal network of friends. You limit the timeline to another 60 days with an interim deliverable in 30. On David, you get troubling feedback of how he is intimidating his staff and is not an effective listener to key stakeholders. But David is also smart and execution-oriented, and he gets things done on deadline. You value the smarts and the execution skills, and you cannot easily replace him in the midst of the finance transformation project, but you want David to improve his behaviors. You provide David candid feedback and assign a coach to him for the next 90 days.

Moving forward

At the end of the 90-day period, you remain disappointed in Carol’s ability as a tax director. It is now clear she will not gain the expertise to effectively drive the tax strategy of your company. David is more troubling. The coach initially notes David is improving, but another 360 review reveals David continues to behave in a manner inconsistent with the values you are trying to instill in your organization. When the coach interviews key staff, it becomes clear that David is trying to manage his behaviors upward in your presence—but his actions in your absence remain problematic. Despite his execution skills, he is undermining your team. In both cases, you have made an effort to rescue key members of your team, but based on your observations, you decide to replace them. In this rescue effort, you minimized your time in the process, leveraging other resources as much as possible to help these individuals develop critical skills and modify behaviors as needed. Not all rescue efforts succeed.

Takeaway: A key role of every executive is to develop their teams. But watch out for the rescue fantasy. Rescue efforts with direct reports should generally maintain an established timeline that helps resolutions occur in the first year. You also have to consider the opportunity cost of your time in a failed rescue. Using third-party resources such as external coaches, training programs, or internal and external networks to help individuals develop the skills they lack can give you leverage in rescue efforts.

Credits

Written by: Ajit Kambil

Topics in this article

Executive Transitions , Talent , Leadership

Deloitte Consulting

Learn more
Download Subscribe

Related

img Trending

Interactive 3 days ago

Ajit Kambil

Ajit Kambil

Global CFO Program Research Director

Ajit is the Global Research director of Deloitte LLP's CFO Program. He oversees the diverse research initiatives of the program in areas such as leadership, capital markets and risk and created CFO Insights, a biweekly publication serving more than thirty five thousand subscribers. Ajit also developed Deloitte’s Executive Transition Lab which helps CxOs make an efficient and effective transition into their new role. Prior to his role in the CFO Program, Ajit was the global director of Deloitte Research. He is widely published in leading business and technology journals on varied topics. An eCommerce pioneer and expert on market design, his book Making Markets: How to Profit from Online Auctions and Exchanges was published by Harvard Business School Press.

  • akambil@deloitte.com
  • +1 212 492 4286

Share article highlights

See something interesting? Simply select text and choose how to share it:

Email a customized link that shows your highlighted text.
Copy a customized link that shows your highlighted text.
Copy your highlighted text.

Executive transitions: The perils of the "rescue fantasy" has been saved

Executive transitions: The perils of the "rescue fantasy" has been removed

An Article Titled Executive transitions: The perils of the "rescue fantasy" already exists in Saved items

 
Forgot password

To stay logged in, change your functional cookie settings.

OR

Social login not available on Microsoft Edge browser at this time.

Connect Accounts

Connect your social accounts

This is the first time you have logged in with a social network.

You have previously logged in with a different account. To link your accounts, please re-authenticate.

Log in with an existing social network:

To connect with your existing account, please enter your password:

OR

Log in with an existing site account:

To connect with your existing account, please enter your password:

Forgot password

Subscribe

to receive more business insights, analysis, and perspectives from Deloitte Insights
✓ Link copied to clipboard

Deloitte Insights delivers proprietary research designed to help organizations turn their aspirations into action.

Deloitte Insights

  • Home
  • Topics
  • Industries
  • About Deloitte Insights

Spotlight

  • Weekly Global Economic Outlook
  • Top 10 Reading Guide
  • Fostering Well-Being
  • Cyber Risk
  • Resilience
Deloitte logo

Learn about Deloitte’s offerings, people, and culture as a global provider of audit, assurance, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax, and related services.

  • Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Cookies
  • Avature Privacy