The leadership gap is your business's most expensive hidden cost. Most companies mistake it for a hiring issue, but hiring should only happen once the gap is bridged.
By Wednesday morning, you already know how the next six months go.
- Week one: You tell yourself it is “a chance to upgrade the role.”
- Week three: You brief a recruiter. They quote four to six months.
- Month two: The team notices. Decisions are slow. Two projects quietly slip.
- Month three: Your best project lead asks for a one to one. You know what it is about before they sit down.
- Month four: You are doing the ops job, your own job, and neither well.
- Month six: Hiring finally happens, but with three months of onboarding, the year is nearly lost before they become effective.
You need a leader by week two, not month six. Not a placeholder, but an experienced hand who stabilizes the team, finishes paused projects, and prepares the role for your permanent hire.
Having filled those roles ourselves, we see this pattern. While the leadership gap rarely makes headlines, it is typically why actual performance falls short of your initial projections.
So one honest question.
When a key leader resigns tomorrow, do you have a plan for week two, or only a plan for month six?
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