My friend Clark Waterfall has posted another entry in his ongoing series shining a light into the black box that is retained executive search.  He looks at the perennial question of Subject Matter Expert versus Best Athlete.  Lots of good discussion there on the factors that ought to power that decision, but I wanted to pull just one thread out of it.  Clark mentions that mature companies may want to lean toward the Best Athlete model to bring in fresh perspectives. 

If they can take their business athletic ability and learn a new sport/industry, it keeps them motivated, excited, fresh, and leaning into the role rather than what can be called “career-coasting,” where an executive is just doing the same thing for a different company-same industry, same title, same goals, etc.

The idea of career coasting is an interesting one, and one I think should be given more consideration even in not yet mature company situations.  Too frequently board members or CEOs, when they think of the position spec, will ask for somebody who's done exactly this recently and successfully and perhaps repeatedly.  Career coasting is one of myriad reasons to think that this kind of focus can be a big mistake. 

If you think about hiring decisions in the context of candidates who are already well know to the hiring authorities, we frequently give people jobs that are a step removed from their previous experience. Venture investors will take a CEO who they trust to get things done, and put him into another company significantly different from the earlier experience. In larger companies taking on new challenges, only partially related to previous experience, is part of any high performing executive's development. Only in the hiring strangers context is such a premium put on the close fit of industry expertise. Why do people act that way? Perhaps it gives us something concrete we can use to rationalize the decision rather than have to admit that we're relying solely on our own judgement.

At any rate Clark gave me an excuse to go on about one of my pet theories, that one of the biggest hiring mistakes I see is too tight a focus on experience in exactly X market. Of course, there are positions where that does make sense, but I believe hiring authorities tend too frequently in that direction by default.