01
The obvious question
The question is usually about a named person — a COO, a divisional leader, a CFO — who has performed well. The board wants to know whether they can take the next step.
02
The deeper decision
‘Ready’ is an incomplete word. Ready for which mandate, with which team, under which ownership, at which point in the company’s development? Someone can be ready to lead continuity and not yet ready to lead transformation.
The CEO role also differs in kind, not only in size. It removes the person above you, adds the board and the outside world, and makes you the place where ambiguity ends. The useful question is whether the person has shown the capacity to grow into that, not whether they have already done it.
03
What changes the answer
- The mandate
- Stabilise, grow, turn around or prepare for sale — each asks for a different kind of readiness.
- Support around them
- A strong chair and a capable team make a stretch appointment more viable.
- Timing
- Twelve months of deliberate exposure can change the answer.
- The alternatives
- Readiness is always judged relative to the realistic options.
04
What most people underestimate
- Loneliness of the roleMany capable leaders struggle less with the work than with having no one above them.
- Board relationshipsManaging a board is a skill most internal candidates have had little chance to practise.
- Former peersLeading people who were colleagues yesterday changes relationships in ways that are hard to rehearse.
- Confidence as evidenceVisible eagerness is easily read as readiness; quiet reflection is easily read as doubt.
05
What evidence actually matters
What tends to persuade
- Excellent results in the current role
- Confidence and visible ambition
- Long service and loyalty
What tends to predict
- How the person has handled roles where they had to learn fast
- How they reason about ambiguity and competing interests
- Evidence they can lead through others rather than through expertise
- Their own honest account of what they would find hardest
What persuades is not irrelevant. It simply tends to weigh more in the room than it deserves.
06
What to ask next
- 1Ready for which mandate, specifically?
- 2What has this person done that resembles what the role will ask — and what have they never done?
- 3What support would turn a stretch into a reasonable risk?
- 4What would they need to stop doing to succeed?
- 5How do they describe their own gaps?