The CEO We Need Next Isn’t Necessarily the CEO We’ve Hired Before

Livingston James Head of Research, Kirsty McLardy, explores whether organisations are focusing too heavily on past experience when appointing CEOs.

Drawing on insights from our 2026 Future CEO Report, Kirsty considers why future leadership potential, adaptability and behavioural competencies may be just as important as previous executive experience.

 

The CEO We Need Next Isn’t Necessarily the CEO We’ve Hired Before

When organisations are appointing a CEO, the instinct to look for someone who has proven experience and has “been there / done that” is understandable. Often organisations look for someone who has led at a similar scale, operated in a similar sector and delivered against a similar set of challenges; thus offering a track record that gives the Board confidence.

But what happens when the environment in which the next CEO will operate looks fundamentally different from the environment in which previous CEOs have succeeded?

This is one of the questions that emerged from our 2026 Future CEO Report, produced in association with EY. Drawing on the views of more than 200 senior leaders across sectors and functions, the research pointed towards a changing definition of effective CEO leadership. Vision and determination now sit at the top of the list of attributes, overtaking resilience, while emotional intelligence, courage, adaptability, transparency and humility are increasingly important.

This raised a broader question for us: Are organisations sufficiently focused on identifying the person who can lead the organisation they are becoming, rather than simply finding someone who has successfully led an organisation similar to what they have been?

 

Experience Matters, but it isn’t Enough on its Own

Experience remains an important part of executive selection, providing evidence of judgement, scale, commerciality and delivery. However, experience is fundamentally backward-looking, and thus unable to tell us how someone will respond when faced with something they have never encountered before.

EY’s latest CEO research shows that the next generation of CEOs won’t simply inherit established business models but will increasingly be responsible for reshaping them – AI investment and redesign being just one example.

Recent commentary from Forbes has similarly questioned whether traditional measures of past performance remain sufficient as AI and the pace of change alter the context in which leaders operate. The emphasis is shifting towards how leaders handle uncertainty, adapt their thinking and continue learning.

As such, when approaching assessment of candidates, we should increasingly be asking “What evidence do we have that this person can succeed when the circumstances are different?”

 

From Performance to Potential

For “up-and-coming” CEO candidates, the transition from functional leadership to enterprise leadership requires a shift in perspective: from optimising one part of the organisation to balancing competing priorities across the whole organisation, and from solving known problems to creating clarity when there may be no established answer.

When we consider this in parallel with the Future CEO findings, if vision, determination, EQ, courage and adaptability are becoming more important, simply assessing whether someone has accumulated the “right” career history may not be enough. In this scenario, it is important to understand what sits underneath such experience and understand how these candidates think, learn, adapt and lead.

 

What Can Psychometric Assessment Add?

Psychometric assessment can play an important role here, provided it is used as part of a broader evidence base rather than a standalone answer. Well-designed psychometric assessments can help explore underlying characteristics, preferences and capabilities that may influence how someone responds to complexity, ambiguity, change, pressure and other people.

This insight matters because the future CEO will inevitably encounter situations for which their previous experience provides only part of the answer. In saying this, it is important to note that there is no single personality profile that makes someone a successful CEO. A CEO leading a PE-backed growth business may require a different combination of capabilities from one leading a highly regulated organisation, a family-owned business or a technology company undergoing transformation.

The future CEO profile should therefore start by understanding the future strategy and what the individual’s impact will be in connection with that, i.e. What will the organisation need to achieve over the next three to five years? What will make that difficult? What leadership behaviours will be required?

Only then can we meaningfully assess whether the talent pool contains individuals with the right combination of experience, capability and potential.

 

Assessment Can and Should Lead to Development

This is where executive assessment and L&D have the opportunity to become much more closely connected. A strong, integrated approach would use assessment to identify what experiences and development an individual needs to be successful in a role – rather than having assessment, L&D and succession planning all sitting in silos.

For example, a high-performing CFO may demonstrate exceptional commercial judgement and strategic thinking but have limited experience leading large-scale organisational transformation, or a Commercial Director may have outstanding customer and growth instincts but need greater experience of operational delivery. The answer is not to discount these individuals, but instead to deliberately develop them.

CIPD’s latest guidance on learning needs analysis makes this point from an organisational perspective: effective L&D begins with understanding both current and future capability requirements, assessing existing capability, and identifying the gaps between the two.

McKinsey also advocates a similar evolution in L&D, arguing that learning increasingly needs to be integrated into work itself, with development linked directly to strategic workforce planning, capability gaps and measurable business outcomes.

 

So, What Does the Future CEO Look Like?

The answer is that there is no fixed profile and the Future CEO is certainly not simply the person with the strongest CV, nor necessarily the person who has already held the CEO title.

The Future CEO is likely to be someone who can create clarity when there is uncertainty; make decisions when there is ambiguity; bring people with them through change; continue learning when their existing expertise is challenged; and use technology without losing sight of the humans who ultimately determine whether transformation succeeds.

If vision and determination, EQ, courage, adaptability, transparency and humility are the characteristics becoming more important, the challenge for organisations is to translate those characteristics from a list of desirable attributes into something much more practical by asking how we identify, assess and develop them.

Our belief is that more rounded assessment processes are going to become ever more prevalent, as we rely less on evidence of previous experience, and more on understanding underlying behavioural competencies and future potential.

 

Have Your Say in the 2027 Future CEO Survey

Building on our previous Future CEO reports, Livingston James and EY are now inviting leaders across all sectors and functions to contribute to our latest research through a short five-minute survey. Alongside succession planning and the attributes future CEOs will need, this year’s research explores how leadership roles are evolving, how organisations are turning AI investment into measurable returns, and how UK perspectives compare with global insights. Individual responses will remain confidential and anonymous. We would greatly value your insights as we continue to explore the future of leadership. Take part in the survey here.

 

To discuss executive assessment, succession planning or identifying future leadership potential within your organisation, please get in touch with Kirsty McLardy: [email protected] or a member of the Livingston James team.