July 2025 Newsletter
Burning Questions from the C-Suite
From a CEO: How do I choose a Right Hand?
Whether promoting from within or selecting an external candidate, a Right Hand hire is risky. The wrong culture fit can kill the company. An exec with missing skills can kill the company. A leader who doesn’t work well with the CEO can kill the company. So any RH misstep can kill the company? Great. No pressure.
Ok, I’m exaggerating. But letʼs be honest: it is a hard recovery when any leadership hire doesn’t work out. And a Right Hand hiring fail can be worse than other fails because the RH is so influential, so closely connected to the CEO, and so involved with the employees.
Whatʼs a CEO to do? Here are three tips to improve your RH hiring:
Define Impact. What business problem are you trying to solve by adding a RH? If the RH could do only one thing, what should it be? Drive a specific change? Create certain policies or processes? Lead an entirely new thing not done before, such as expanding into a new market? In what ways will the business look different because of this hire? What will they do that no one else will? Don’t spout platitudes like “improve operations” or “make us more scalable.” Write down what specific transformation the business will see under the RH’s leadership. Describe in words or pictures what the business should look like one year after this hire. Create at least one full page describing the impact the RH will have. Then pitch that vision to three people you trust and refine based on their input. Andrea Steinbrenner, an expert on business exit engineering, said that succession planning is about relevance and legacy, not just valuation. What legacy should this RH leave? What relevance should they have to your employees, customers, vendors, and you?
Document the Daily. Many RH hires fail because RH and CEO have different expectations about how hands-on the RH is expected to be. Will they create spreadsheets themselves or only interpret data provided by others? Will they call customers? Will they close deals? Will they go in the field to assess projects themselves? Will they create reports? Will they have an assistant? What will that person do? A Day-On-The-Job document is not a job description or list of responsibilities. It’s a snapshot of everything the person might do in a single 24-hour period. Imagine you’re creating a documentary. Where will the first shoot take place? At the desk? Doing what? On the shop floor? Doing what? Where will the second shoot take place? And the third? Who will the RH talk to? About what? Nitty-gritty details tell the real story of the job. Don’t glamorize it. You are trying to weed out mismatched expectations, not portray an optimal scenario.
Vet Don’t Pitch. If you don’t vet, you will be surprised after the hire. I guarantee it. And usually not in a good way. So what if you went to high school together? So what if it’s your sister? So what if you know them from the industry? They still need to be vetted! Stop selling candidates on the opportunity and start asking them questions instead. You probably know a thing or two about them (probably their integrity or their industry knowledge, the two things that make CEOs starry eyed). But you don’t know if they fit this specific job. You don’t know their technical skills. You don’t know if they’ll want the Day-On-The-Job you’re offering. You don’t know how they problem-solve with customers. You don’t know how they give instructions to employees. You don’t know what they hated about their prior managers. You don’t know their career ambitions. You don’t know enough to make an informed decision. Pitching instead of vetting is the single biggest hiring mistake we see in founder-led companies.
Famous Right Hands—Sports Movie Edition
Have you ever been moved to a different role when your board or CEO or partners wanted to bring in new talent? Giving up part of your job can feel demoralizing, even if it was your idea or it makes logical sense. In the Remember the Titans movie, beloved Head Coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton) is demoted to Assistant Coach, and Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) comes in from outside as Head Coach. Not only does Boone take Yoast’s job during the civil rights fight in the U.S. South when tensions were already high, but he brings an entirely different approach. Their coaching styles are polar opposites.
After some hollering and scowling, Boone and Yoast start to see each other’s competencies. Yoast learns from Boone to stand his ground and be stern. Boone learns from Yoast to get on the players’ level and connect emotionally. These two proud, capable men grow as leaders and figure out how to build a winning team together, even though neither of them liked the org structure they were handed.
(You may not know that Heather loves every sports movie ever made. This one would be worth watching even if it didn’t have RH lessons.)
News
Thanks to Vistage Chair Dr. Tracy Stewart and the CEOs in group 8612, Heather and her husband went to Alaska this month. Kelly got charged by a bison. Heather’s stomach barely survived deep-sea fishing. Ask if you want some salmon, rockeye, or halibut!
The real news is that because so many of you have requested help finding a Right Hand, we’ve now formally partnered with One Eighty Collective to offer RH recruiting. Our Right Hand Advantage package starts with helping CEOs identify whether they even need a Right Hand and if so, what level. Then it includes full-service recruiting, with extras like reworking your hiring process and training you on how to vet rather than pitch. Then we take both CEO and RH through a proven onboarding program so they learn to read each other’s minds quickly.
One Eighty Collective has already done excellent work for several Practical PhD clients. Partners Andrea Rishmawi and Joanna Murphy specialize in helping CEOs get complex executive hires right the first time. They have been through our Right Hand training, and one hundred percent of their clients either come from a referral or have given them a referral.
Check out the Right Hand Advantage flyer or query for more details.
Recommendation
Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chris Heath and Karla Starr shows you how to present numerical data in your presentations and pitches and documents. If you've ever struggled with making numbers understandable to the board, employees, or investors, you might love this little book. The examples are gold.
What can we do for you?
At Practical PhD, we help companies Get the Right Hand Right so they're ready for top leadership transition in 1-3 years:
Find and hire a Right Hand
Onboard a new Right Hand
Teach an aspiring Right Hand the job
Performance-manage a struggling Right Hand
Create a phased leadership succession plan