How to pick your next CEO – and ensure they have the qualities of a great tech leader

Succession planning is essential to ensuring operations don't dip when key personnel leave. That applies as much to mid-level staff as it does to senior management and even the CEO. But a lot goes into choosing the next CEO for your organization, with plenty of considerations to make over a candidate's experience, alignment with values, as well as their personality traits and personal qualities.

Conventional wisdom suggests the more experience you have in a field, the more likely you are to improve at whatever it is that you're doing – whether that's gardening or graphic design – but when it comes to choosing a CEO, that might not necessarily be the case. New research published in the journal Strategic Management Society, in fact, suggests the opposite.

"Most people improve with practice, but we find that this doesn't hold true when it comes to directors selecting new CEOs, despite the high stakes," said co-author of the new study Rich Gentry, chair and professor of management at the University of Mississippi, in a press release. "We found that directors with more past experience in CEO hiring do not tend to select better-performing CEOs. In fact, there's some evidence they may do slightly worse."

The CEO hiring paradox?

The research centered around a model that probed the selection of 1,345 CEOs from 900 S&P 1500 firms between 1990 and 2020, and found that generally lower CEO performance versus expectations following succession correlated with higher experience among the directors who chose them. But there was a catch – this was the opposite when the CEO involuntarily left (where previous experience led to a better hire). Where the CEO voluntarily left, previous hiring experience meant weaker performance from the candidate appointed.

"Hiring a CEO is very difficult, and it is almost impossible to know in advance who would be the perfect CEO," said another co-author of the study Steven Boivie, the Carroll and Dorothy Conn Chair in New Ventures Leadership at Texas A&M, in the press release. "Because of that difficulty, it is easy for boards to overinterpret their prior experiences and to believe they should copy those same patterns. If directors know that they need to avoid overgeneralizing from their prior experiences, then they might make fewer hiring errors."

There are several reasons why this hiring paradox may exist, according to Irina Wolpert, a leadership advisor at Egon Zehnder, but the main reason is infrequent practice. "CEO searches are rare, so boards don’t develop the repetition or feedback loops that drive expertise," she tells ITPro, adding that context is constantly changing, with other factors like internal politics and overconfidence also at play.

"The 'right' CEO today may look very different from five years ago due to disruption, digital transformation, or evolving stakeholder expectations," she adds. "Group decision-making, power balances, and consensus pressures can dilute rigor, even when individual directors recognize risks. Past exposure can give directors a false sense of mastery, overlooking the uniqueness of each hire. Boards rarely scrutinize their own role in a failed hire, so lessons aren’t consistently learned."

The qualities to look out for in a CEO

It's often said that CEOs share many traits with psychopaths. That's according to several pieces of research through the years, as well as the odd case study – but that is, of course, not necessarily true. While the rate of psychopaths among CEOs is 3.5% (more than three times higher than the 1% rate among the wider population), that's not to say it's a correlation worth considering, or even that it's desirable when looking for qualities in the next leader of one’s organization.

Deloitte has previously created four personality profiles to categorize tech CEOs, with the majority sitting in two camps. The first was Pioneer, including qualities such as outgoing, detail averse, risk-seeking, adaptable and imaginative. The second was Driver, with qualities such as quantitative, logical, focused, competitive, experimental and deeply curious. When it comes to recruitment, things are also in flux. Harvard Business Review found that C-suite job descriptions mentioning strength in social skills has surged since 2005, while descriptions mentioning strength in managing finances or material resources has declined.

For Jim Rettew, an interim CEO at Interim Leadership Solutions, there are a few key qualities that make a great CEO. "Over the last decade, I’ve served as interim CEO for seven different nonprofits, nearly all of them in crisis," Rettew tells ITPro. "In that role, I’ve not only had to steady the ship but also partner with boards to hire the permanent CEO. Having been on both sides of the table, I’ve learned that the qualities boards think they want in a CEO aren’t always the ones that actually matter."

The most successful CEOs that Rettew has seen possess qualities including context fit, they're right for the organization at that moment, learning agility, they don't show up with a rigid playbook as well as trust and integrity. "You can feel it when they talk about past challenges," he adds. "Do they take responsibility and give credit, or do they shift blame and make themselves the hero?"

"From there, the best CEOs are talent scouts, resource magnets, and disciplined operators. They attract great people, open doors to funding, keep the numbers strong, and make a small number of courageous decisions quickly. When a crisis hits, they remain calm, visible, and specific — turning organizational anxiety into action."

Improving the CEO succession process

Your organization can take various steps to improve the CEO hiring process, from adopting scorecards to adopting forward-looking measures. Wolpert pushes this latter point especially, with an emphasis on picking a candidate that can adapt as things change in the coming years.

"Start with clarity on strategy and needs. Before evaluating candidates, boards must define the company’s long-term direction, priorities, and challenges," she says. "This ensures the CEO can lead toward the future, not just manage today’s issues. Clear strategic alignment also creates consistent evaluation criteria and communicates expectations effectively to candidates."

There are several steps that she recommends that businesses take, including using scenario-based assessments, evaluating cultural fit, integrating coaching and development, and conducting a formal post-hire review of the process.

Rettew adds that the best committees that he's been a part of worked with using a scorecard of expected outcomes for the first 12-18 months, structured interviews, and real-world examples. This should come alongside backchannel references including peers, direct reports and partners.

"When I’ve been on the candidate side, hiring committees wanted to see a clear 90-day stabilization plan, a simple theory of how I’d strengthen the organization, my operating cadence (dashboards, forecasts, rhythms), and how I personally approach fundraising and people decisions," he explains. "Those were the areas that built trust.

"At the end of the day, the lesson is simple: Stop over-indexing on years of experience. Hire the leader who can learn fast, create clarity, set a steady rhythm, and leave stronger leaders behind. Because the right CEO doesn’t just survive the role — they transform the organization."

As for the authors of the new research, they recommend that boards likely need more systematic support, beyond just previous experience, when hiring new CEOs. That is to make sure directors aren't overgeneralizing or relying on overconfidence attained from their previous decisions. If directors acknowledge their limitations and approach each hiring decision with deep contextual understanding, they added, then they may be able to avoid any decision-making errors.