Elena Maysyura, Partner in Friisberg’s Kyiv office, attended the 22nd Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting, Peace Through Strength NOW!, joining an extraordinary gathering of political leaders, military commanders, policymakers, business leaders and representatives of the defence and technology sectors.
With 700 participants from 28 countries, the meeting inevitably focused on the immediate challenge of securing a just and lasting peace for Ukraine. Yet another theme ran strongly through the discussions: the remarkable technological capability Ukraine has developed during the war, and the importance of maintaining that advantage.
For Elena and for our colleagues across Friisberg, this has particular relevance because Defence & Aerospace is an important area of our executive search and leadership advisory work, both in Ukraine and internationally.
One of the most interesting discussions examined how Ukraine and its partners can maintain a technological advantage over Russia, bringing together former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and leaders from the defence and technology community. Among the participants was Iryna Terekh, CEO of Fire Point, a Ukrainian defence technology company with which Friisberg is proud to work.
Fire Point represents something much bigger that is happening across Ukraine. Necessity has created an extraordinary environment for innovation, in which defence technologies are being conceived, developed, tested and adapted at a speed rarely seen within more conventional defence markets.
Ukraine is consequently developing not only new capabilities, but also companies and leaders whose experience will become increasingly relevant to the future of European defence.
For Elena, this transformation is something she sees at close quarters. Ukrainian defence businesses are evolving rapidly, often moving from entrepreneurial beginnings towards increasingly sophisticated organisations requiring the leadership, structures and international relationships necessary to support their next stage of growth.
Technology may be driving the transformation, but technology alone cannot deliver it.
The next generation of Ukrainian defence businesses will need exceptional leaders who can preserve the speed and ingenuity that made them successful while building organisations capable of scaling and operating internationally. They will need executives who understand technology and manufacturing, but who are equally comfortable with investment, governance, organisational development and the increasingly complex relationships between industry and government.
There is a wider European dimension to this challenge. Ukraine's experience is already questioning established assumptions about how quickly defence technologies can be developed and deployed, while the knowledge being accumulated through their use in real operational conditions has significance far beyond Ukraine itself.
For Friisberg, this makes the connection between our teams in Ukraine and the UK particularly valuable.
The UK has one of Europe's most established and internationally connected defence and aerospace sectors, while Ukraine has developed an extraordinary concentration of technological innovation, operational experience and entrepreneurial leadership. The relationship between the two should not therefore be viewed simply in terms of British expertise and investment flowing towards Ukraine. Increasingly, knowledge, talent and opportunity will travel in both directions.
President Zelenskyy told the YES meeting that Ukraine's own defence capabilities, production capacity and partnerships with Europe and other allies would remain an essential part of the country's security guarantees both during the war and afterwards.
That longer-term perspective matters because the organisations being built in Ukraine today will not cease to matter when the immediate conflict ends. Many of the technologies, businesses and leadership capabilities being developed under the extraordinary pressures of war are likely to become an important part of Europe's future defence architecture.
For Elena Maysyura and our colleagues in Ukraine, being part of this community means witnessing that transformation from within and working alongside the businesses and leaders helping to shape it.
Across Friisberg, our long-established Defence & Aerospace practice gives us a broader international perspective, connecting Ukrainian innovation and leadership with relevant experience, talent and organisations across the UK and our global network.
That matters because the next generation of defence leaders will not necessarily come from the places in which the industry has traditionally looked for them. As technology crosses borders and conventional boundaries between defence, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, AI and autonomous systems continue to blur, finding the right leadership increasingly requires an international perspective too.
#Friisberg #ExecutiveSearch #Leadership #Defence #Aerospace #DefenceTech #Ukraine #YES2026 #FirePoint
I have been thinking quite a lot recently about succession planning, and particularly about whether we sometimes ask the wrong question.
When boards talk about succession, the conversation quite naturally turns to people. Who could step up? Who is nearly ready? Who might replace the CEO, CFO or another member of the executive team if they left tomorrow?
These are all perfectly sensible questions, of course, but I wonder whether there is a more important one that should come first:
What will this job actually require in three or five years' time?
Because I am not convinced it will require quite the same things it requires today.
Look at what has happened to senior leadership in just the past few years. A CEO does not need to be a technologist, but increasingly they do need to understand enough about AI to decide where to invest, where the risks lie and how it might change their business. They are dealing with geopolitical uncertainty, volatile supply chains, skills shortages, changing expectations from employees and investors, and transformation programmes which seem to arrive before the previous transformation has finished.
The ONS recently found that 35% of UK businesses were already using at least one AI technology, while 55% of employees said they were using AI for work or education, but among businesses struggling to adopt AI, lack of expertise remains a significant barrier.
There was another ONS finding that interested me even more - among businesses in the highest decile for management practices, 88% had adopted at least one of the major technologies examined and among those in the lowest decile, it was only 51%.
That feels important because technology itself is only part of the story because you can buy technology, you can bring in advisers and you can recruit technical specialists. What is much harder to acquire overnight is the leadership judgement required to decide what matters, what does not, what should change and, crucially, how you take people with you.
And that rather neatly brings me back to succession.
I have seen succession plans which are extremely detailed with names, boxes, readiness assessments, development plans and careful distinctions between "ready now", "ready in two years" and "ready in five", but there is a danger in all of this apparent certainty.
If we identify someone as a potential CEO in 2026 and spend the next five years preparing that person for the role as it exists today, what happens if the organisation needs a very different kind of CEO by 2031?
That is not an argument against internal succession, in fact it is quite the opposite. Developing your own people properly is one of the best things an organisation can do, because somebody who understands the business, its people, customers and culture can have an enormous advantage - but there is a difference between developing people and anointing them.
Once somebody becomes "the successor", it is remarkably easy for an organisation to start arranging the evidence around the conclusion. They are given the right exposure, moved into the right roles and increasingly regarded as the natural choice, but by the time the appointment arrives, asking whether somebody else might now be better suited can feel almost like undoing years of work.
Perhaps we need to be a little less certain.
There is an interesting parallel in the progress British companies have made on board diversity. Women now hold around 43% of FTSE 350 board positions, compared with fewer than 10% when the succession of government-backed reviews began in 2011. The Parker Review has also recorded substantial progress in ethnic diversity on FTSE boards. Those changes matter because they show what businesses can achieve when something is measured and kept firmly on the agenda, but if we look slightly further down the leadership pipeline the picture becomes more complicated.
Despite women holding roughly 43% of FTSE 350 board positions, they hold only around 8% of FTSE 350 CEO positions. Women account for 35.9% of leadership roles below board level, while more than six out of ten appointments into those leadership populations during the latest reporting year still went to men. So perhaps the problem is not simply who gets a seat around the board table, it's who gets the experiences, opportunities, responsibility and trust that eventually make somebody a credible candidate to lead the organisation.
That is why I think succession planning needs to start much earlier than the succession plan.
Rather than beginning with "Who could replace our CEO?", I would begin with "Where is this business going?"
What will threaten it? What will create growth? Which capabilities will matter more than they do today? What will technology change? Which markets will become more important? What kind of organisation are we actually going to be?
Only then would I ask who could lead it.
Sometimes the answer will be sitting inside the organisation already, which is exactly what good talent development should make possible, but sometimes the answer will be outside it because the business needs experience or perspective it simply does not yet possess.
What worries me more is the apparently safe appointment, because "safe" usually means familiar - someone from the same sector, with the expected career history, who has already done something very similar somewhere else and whose CV allows everyone around the table to feel reassured.
There are circumstances where that is precisely the right appointment, but there are others where appointing somebody whose experience perfectly matches your past is a rather strange way of preparing for your future.
The Financial Reporting Council already expects UK listed companies to maintain effective succession plans for boards and senior management, and its guidance talks about identifying future capability gaps as well as developing internal talent. I think the words future capability deserve far more attention than they sometimes receive because ultimately succession is not about having a name in a box, it is about having enough strong people, with sufficiently different experiences and perspectives, so that when the organisation reaches its next inflection point there is a genuine choice.
Perhaps the question every board should occasionally ask is not:
"Do we have a successor?"
but:
"If the person on our succession plan was not already on it, knowing what we know about where this business is heading, would we choose them today?"
I suspect the answer to that question might occasionally make for a rather interesting board meeting...
The United States remains the world's largest executive talent market and one of its most influential centres of innovation, investment and business leadership. From the technology giants of the Pacific Northwest to the international commercial hubs of New York and Miami, organisations face increasing competition for leaders capable of navigating growth, transformation and international complexity.
For clients operating across these markets, success depends upon more than executive search expertise alone. It requires advisers who understand regional business cultures, industry dynamics and the realities of leadership at the highest level.
That is the strength of Friisberg's capability across the United States and the Americas.
Through our Managing Partners, Dave Hill and Luisa Guzmán, clients gain access to exceptional executive search expertise and teams spanning technology, industrial markets, manufacturing, consumer businesses, professional services and international leadership, all supported by one fully integrated global partnership.
Based in Miami and New York, Luisa Guzmán leads executive search assignments across the United States and Latin America, bringing more than twenty-eight years of executive search and leadership advisory experience across the Americas and Europe.
Her career has been built on advising multinational corporations, privately owned businesses, family enterprises and international investors on the appointment of senior executives who can succeed across diverse markets, cultures and jurisdictions. With extensive experience throughout North America and Latin America, Luisa brings an understanding of executive leadership that combines commercial insight with genuine cultural fluency.
Miami has become one of the world's most important international business gateways, connecting North America with the rapidly evolving economies of Latin America. Combined with Friisberg's presence in New York, Luisa supports organisations whose leadership challenges increasingly extend beyond national borders, helping clients identify executives capable of operating successfully across complex international markets.
Her work reflects a simple principle that has always underpinned successful executive search: understanding people is every bit as important as understanding businesses.
On the West Coast, Dave Hill leads Friisberg's Seattle and Tucson offices, bringing one of the most distinguished careers in global technology executive search.
Over more than twenty-five years, Dave has held senior executive recruiting and executive search leadership positions with Google, YouTube, Amazon, Microsoft and Expedia, advising some of the world's most influential organisations through periods of extraordinary innovation and growth.
His experience is exceptional both in breadth and depth.
At Google, Dave helped establish the Vice President Executive Recruiting practice while leading executive hiring across Google Devices & Services, Platforms & Ecosystems, YouTube and Core Engineering. Prior to this, he built YouTube's executive search capability from the ground up during one of the platform's most significant periods of expansion.
During almost a decade at Amazon, he led executive recruiting across Amazon Web Services, Prime Video, Amazon Studios, Amazon Music, Kindle, Alexa, Advertising, Twitch, Ring, Whole Foods and many of the company's fastest-growing global businesses. Earlier leadership positions at Microsoft and Expedia further strengthened his expertise in identifying executives for organisations operating at the forefront of technological innovation.
Few executive search professionals have worked so closely with companies that have fundamentally changed the way the world communicates, consumes information, builds software and delivers digital services. That experience gives clients access to insight developed through decades of advising businesses where leadership decisions have global impact.
Seattle continues to rank among the world's foremost technology ecosystems, home to global innovators, cloud computing pioneers, artificial intelligence leaders and venture-backed growth companies. Together with Friisberg's presence in Tucson, Dave's practice provides clients with direct access to one of North America's most dynamic executive talent markets.
While Dave and Luisa each bring distinct market expertise, their greatest strength lies in the way they work together as part of Friisberg's international partnership.
Knowledge is shared across borders. Sector expertise is combined across international teams. Research, market intelligence and executive networks are brought together to support every assignment, regardless of geography.
Whether advising a technology business scaling internationally, an industrial organisation strengthening its leadership team, a private equity investor building portfolio leadership or a multinational appointing senior executives across multiple jurisdictions, clients benefit from our experienced teams working collaboratively across one integrated global organisation.
Increasingly, leadership challenges do not recognise national boundaries.
Organisations require executives who can lead across cultures, manage international operations, accelerate growth, drive transformation and build high-performing teams in rapidly changing markets. Identifying those individuals requires advisers with deep sector expertise, extensive executive networks and first-hand understanding of the environments in which those leaders operate.
Friisberg's capability across the United States reflects exactly that philosophy.
Our offices in Miami, New York, Seattle and Tucson work closely with colleagues across Europe and the wider international firm to deliver executive search and consuktancy serviecs that are vinformed by local knowledge, strengthened by international collaboration and focused on one objective: identifying exceptional leaders who create lasting organisational success.
For almost five decades, Friisberg has built its reputation on trusted relationships, partner-led delivery and cross-border collaboration. Our presence across the United States and the Americas continues that tradition, providing clients with the insight, experience and international perspective required to secure leadership for the challenges of today and the opportunities of tomorrow.
Whether you are strengthening your executive leadership team in the United States, expanding across the Americas or appointing senior leaders with international responsibilities, Friisberg brings together local expertise, global perspective and partner-led delivery.
To discuss how our Managing Partners can support your leadership ambitions, please contact Dave Hill, Luisa Guzmán or your local Friisberg office. We would be delighted to start a conversation.
For much of the past eighteen months, organisations have adopted a cautious approach to senior hiring. Economic uncertainty, persistent inflation, rising employment costs and a slower rate of growth encouraged many boards to delay leadership appointments, restructure existing teams or extend the tenure of incumbent executives rather than embark on significant new searches.
That caution has not disappeared, but there is growing evidence that confidence is beginning to return.
The picture is far from uniform and few would describe the market as buoyant. However, across a number of sectors, organisations are once again making carefully considered investments in leadership where the appointment is expected to drive transformation, growth or long-term resilience.
Recent market indicators suggest that hiring activity has begun to improve after an extended period of restraint. The latest KPMG and Recruitment and Employment Confederation Report on Jobs indicates that the decline in permanent appointments has eased significantly, while temporary hiring has strengthened at its fastest pace for more than three years.
At the same time, several sectors have experienced notable increases in demand for experienced professionals. Technology, manufacturing, utilities and logistics have all reported stronger vacancy growth during recent months, reflecting continued investment in digital capability, infrastructure, supply chain resilience and industrial modernisation.
These are precisely the sectors where leadership decisions have become increasingly strategic rather than operational.
Despite these encouraging signs, the overall labour market remains more subdued than many commentators suggest.
The Office for National Statistics estimates that UK vacancies remain below the levels seen during the post-pandemic peak, while there are now significantly more jobseekers competing for each advertised position than there were only a few years ago.
At first glance this appears to favour employers, but in reality, executive search continues to operate in a very different market.
Exceptional chief executives, finance directors, HR leaders, commercial executives and operational specialists rarely become available simply because vacancy numbers increase. The individuals capable of leading complex organisations are almost always already succeeding elsewhere, and attracting them requires a compelling opportunity rather than simply an attractive remuneration package.
The executive search market has proved more resilient than many areas of the wider employment market because organisations do not appoint senior leaders simply to replace headcount. Boards invest when leadership capability becomes critical to delivering strategy.
Across the UK we are seeing mandates driven by business transformation, digital investment, international expansion, operational improvement, succession planning, regulatory change and private equity activity rather than routine replacement hiring. These appointments are fewer in number, but considerably more significant in their impact.
A single executive appointment can alter the direction of an organisation for many years. That reality means businesses continue to invest in identifying outstanding leaders even during periods of economic uncertainty.
One misconception is that a softer employment market automatically makes senior hiring easier, but our experience suggests precisely the opposite. Although more candidates may technically be available, organisations continue to compete for a relatively small group of proven leaders who combine commercial judgement, strategic thinking, cultural intelligence and the ability to deliver change.
Those individuals are rarely active applicants, they are carefully approached, thoroughly assessed and highly selective about the organisations they choose to join and increasingly, they are evaluating far more than salary. They want clarity of purpose, confidence in the board, a credible growth strategy, an inclusive culture and genuine autonomy to make a difference.
As confidence gradually returns, the organisations achieving the greatest success will not necessarily be those recruiting most aggressively, they will be those asking better questions before beginning a search.
The answers to those questions determine whether a search attracts merely competent candidates or truly exceptional ones.
The UK leadership market is undoubtedly becoming more active, but this should not be mistaken for a return to the broad-based hiring conditions experienced several years ago. Organisations remain disciplined in their investment decisions and are placing greater emphasis on leadership quality than leadership quantity.
From Friisberg UK's perspective, this represents a healthy evolution rather than a temporary recovery.
Businesses are becoming more deliberate about the appointments they make, more rigorous in defining the capabilities they require and more focused on securing leaders who can create lasting value.
For executive search, that is exactly the kind of market in which experience, judgement and a deep understanding of leadership make the greatest difference.
At the executive level, hiring decisions are rarely just about filling a vacancy. They are strategic bets-on leadership, direction, and ultimately, business outcomes. And yet, even in well-run organizations, these bets do not always pay off.
Most companies are aware that a wrong executive hire is expensive. What is less visible-and far more consequential-is how those costs are evolving in today’s environment.
In 2026, the true price of a mis-hire at the top is not only higher. It is also more complex, more immediate, and more difficult to reverse.
Let’s start with what is easy to quantify. Research has long suggested that replacing a senior executive can cost anywhere between 2x to 5x their annual compensation when factoring in recruitment, onboarding, severance, and lost productivity. For C-level roles, that figure can quickly escalate into seven-digit territory.
But these are the accounting costs-the ones that appear on balance sheets and reports.
They are only part of the story.
The real impact of a wrong executive hire often unfolds quietly, across the organization:
These costs rarely show up as line items. But they are often the ones that hurt the most.
If executive hiring has always been high-stakes, why is the risk rising now?
There are several structural shifts at play:
1. Leadership Roles Are More Complex Than Ever Executives today are expected to navigate digital transformation, geopolitical uncertainty, talent shortages, and rapid market shifts-often simultaneously. The margin for error is shrinking.
2. Speed Is Taking Priority Over Precision Many organizations feel pressure to move quickly, especially in competitive markets. But accelerated hiring processes can lead to incomplete evaluation-particularly at the executive level, where nuance matters most.
3. The Talent Pool Is More Global-and Less Visible The best candidates are often not actively looking. They are selective, discreet, and difficult to access through traditional channels. This makes identifying the right fit-not just an available one-more challenging.
4. Cultural Fit Has Become a Strategic Variable It is no longer enough for an executive to deliver results. How they lead, communicate, and align with organizational values has become equally critical-and harder to assess on paper.
One of the most common patterns seen in executive hiring is the decision to move forward with a candidate who feels “good enough.”
On paper, the profile works. The experience is relevant. The interviews are positive.
But something is slightly off-whether in leadership style, adaptability, or long-term fit.
In a tight timeline, these concerns are often rationalized away. This is where the hidden cost begins. Because at the executive level, “almost right” is often completely wrong.
Organizations that consistently make strong executive hires tend to approach the process differently-not necessarily by spending more, but by thinking more rigorously about risk.
A few patterns stand out:
In many cases, this also means involving partners who specialize in navigating complexity, confidentiality, and high-stakes decision-making - not because the process cannot be done internally, but because the cost of getting it wrong is simply too high.
When we are aware of our behaviours, values, beliefs, and the ways they either serve or hinder us, we can make a choice. We can embrace new ways of thinking and acting - or we can resist, remain attached to old patterns, and allow that resistance to gradually become toxic for ourselves and those around us.
The choice to grow is deeply connected to our human drive to evolve and become better versions of ourselves. Transformation occurs only when awareness is followed by intentional action.
Meaningful transformation is often triggered by significant life experiences: a health challenge, a career transition, the loss of an important relationship, or stepping into a completely new environment or role. These moments touch us at a deeper level. They invite us to pause, reflect, and reconsider how we live, lead, and show up in the world.
What I am sharing today is inspired by something I recently witnessed.
A senior leader faced a serious heart condition. Rather than allowing the experience to define him, he chose to embrace the lesson it offered. He decided to operate from a new set of beliefs: to speak from the heart, lead with authenticity, and trust the process of change.
The impact was remarkable: his team noticed the difference in meetings, his peers observed a shift in his leadership style and began following his example and together, they went on to win the top prize in an internal company competition. Yet perhaps the most remarkable outcome was something less tangible - the genuine joy and sense of fulfilment he found within himself. It became contagious.
Transformation begins from within. Different triggers move us, but how is it that we need to wait for the “big trigger” to happen? How can an inspiration be a trigger? Something we spot, watch or read and with courage instead of fear we take step by step forward, seeking support from those who can guide us can be so natural.
That is how growth journey can start, following our natural instinct to evolve, to discover a deeper sense of meaning, to keep learning, growing, and becoming.
Because awareness may open the door but transformation happens when we choose to walk through it.
We are proud to announce the appointment of Birgitte Olrik as Managing Partner of our Copenhagen office, strengthening our presence in the Nordic region and supporting the continued execution of our international growth strategy.
Birgitte joins Friisberg with a combination of experience rarely found within executive search. Before building a distinguished career advising boards and leadership teams, she held senior commercial and leadership positions with internationally recognised organisations including Coloplast, L'Oréal, Danone and Alcan. Having sat on the client side of the table, Birgitte understands first-hand the business model, key revenue drivers and decisions faced by leaders operating in complex and highly competitive markets.
Following the completion of her Executive MBA, Birgitte transitioned into executive search, where she has spent almost two decades helping organisations identify, attract and develop exceptional leadership talent. Throughout that time, she has earned a reputation for sound judgement, strong business insight and an ability to build long-term trusted relationships with clients across Denmark and the wider Nordic region.
Previoulsy, Birgitte founded and led Capriole Consulting Group, creating a highly respected executive search practice known for its quality, integrity and client-centred approach. Her appointment brings not only extensive search expertise, but also deep commercial understanding, entrepreneurial spirit and a powerful network developed over many years working with leaders across multiple industries.
For Friisberg, this appointment represents far more than the addition of an accomplished executive search professional, it also reflects our commitment to bringing together outstanding leaders in strategically important markets where local expertise is strengthened through global collaboration. As organisations increasingly face leadership challenges that transcend borders, clients require advisors who combine deep market knowledge with international perspective. Birgitte embodies that philosophy.
Commenting on the appointment, Friisberg Chair Zoltán Pethő said:
"The future of executive search belongs to firms that combine exceptional local expertise with international reach. Birgitte brings both. She understands business because she has led businesses. She understands executive search because she has spent years advising organisations at the highest level. Her reputation in the Danish market is outstanding, her values align perfectly with our One Firm philosophy, and her appointment further strengthens our ability to support clients across the Nordic region and beyond. We know that our clients achieve better outcomes when they have access to advisors who understand both their local market and the wider global landscape and we are delighted to welcome her to Friisberg."
Birgitte added:
"Throughout my career, I have always believed that successful executive search begins with understanding people, understanding organisations and building trust. What attracted me to Friisberg was the strength of its international offices, its collaborative culture and its commitment to quality. I am excited to join a firm that combines local market expertise with global reach, and I look forward to supporting clients across Denmark, the Nordic region and internationally."
The appointment comes at an exciting time for Friisberg. As the firm approaches its 50th anniversary in 2027, we continue to invest in exceptional people, strategically important markets and the relationships that have underpinned our success for nearly five decades. Birgitte's appointment is another important step in that journey.
A chair once remarked to me, after a difficult CEO transition, that the organisation had become, “informationally rich but emotionally illiterate.”
The dashboards were excellent, reporting was immaculate, productivity targets were being met, yet leadership had completely missed the fact that trust inside the organisation had quietly collapsed because nobody had properly interpreted the silence.
That observation has stayed with me because it captures something increasingly visible across modern organisations: HR functions are quietly shrinking.
Not everywhere, and not always dramatically, but enough to become a genuine boardroom conversation. AI-driven start-ups have popularised the idea of ultra-lean operating models with minimal support functions, while larger corporates are increasingly centralising HR, automating recruitment and reducing management layers in pursuit of efficiency. In recent weeks alone, headlines around AI-related workforce reductions at major global firms, including banks and technology companies, have intensified debate around how lean organisations can realistically become.
The pressure is understandable. UK businesses are operating in a difficult environment of rising employment costs, weak productivity growth and economic uncertainty. The CIPD reports that one in six employers now expects AI to reduce headcount over the coming year, rising to one in four large private-sector firms. Clerical, administrative and junior management roles are viewed as particularly exposed.
As a result, many organisations are asking themselves the same question: should we follow?
Some of this change is entirely rational because many businesses genuinely became too bureaucratic and process-heavy, but there is a profound difference between removing administration and removing interpretation because strong HR professionals were never simply policy managers. At their best, they acted as organisational interpreters, they sensed when leadership messaging was no longer landing, when a culture had become politically cautious, or when a restructuring looked convincing in a board presentation but damaging in practice.
That matters because businesses are operating in an unusually fragile environment. Hybrid working has weakened informal communication channels and AI itself is creating uncertainty around future roles and skills. Many organisations are simultaneously managing transformation fatigue, economic pressure and shifting workforce expectations.
The irony is that, at precisely the moment when human interpretation may matter most, many firms are reducing the capability that historically provided it, and some are already discovering the limits of overcorrection. Gartner recently warned that companies cutting staff aggressively in anticipation of AI efficiencies are often failing to achieve the returns they expected, with many later needing to rebuild capability.
Leaders can become increasingly insulated by dashboards, formal reporting structures and systems while losing visibility of what employees are actually thinking and feeling. Problems then emerge later and more publicly: cultural fragmentation, failed transformation programmes, retention issues or leadership distrust.
At Friisberg, we increasingly see boards placing greater value on qualities that are difficult to automate: judgement, communication, emotional intelligence and the ability to navigate complexity calmly. Technical expertise still matters enormously, but leadership today is becoming as much about interpretation as execution.
Organisations are not simply systems, they are human communities, and communities rarely function well when nobody is listening between the lines.
Somewhere along the way business became obsessed with the idea that leaner automatically meant better.
For years, businesses have pursued flatter organisational structures in the belief that fewer layers meant faster decisions, greater agility and lower costs. In many cases, that thinking was entirely understandable because some organisations had become unnecessarily bureaucratic, slow-moving and overly managerial.
However, many companies are now beginning to discover that management layers did not merely exist to control process - quite often, they existed to develop future leaders.
Across the UK, organisations are simultaneously restructuring, embedding hybrid working and implementing artificial intelligence tools, often without fully understanding the cumulative cultural impact of those changes. Individually, each initiative may appear commercially rational. Together, however, they may be quietly weakening leadership pipelines at precisely the moment leadership complexity is increasing.
Leadership capability is rarely developed instantly.
Most senior executives learned gradually through exposure to operational pressure, stakeholder management, difficult decisions and observation of more experienced leaders over many years. Historically, middle management structures created the environment where much of that development occurred. They provided emerging leaders with the opportunity to gain judgement, resilience and commercial maturity before carrying full enterprise-level responsibility.
When organisations aggressively flatten structures, they often remove precisely those developmental stepping stones.
Initially, the model can appear highly successful: costs reduce, decision-making accelerates and reporting lines simplify. The difficulty often emerges several years later when businesses suddenly discover there are too few operationally mature leaders ready to step into senior roles.
Hybrid working has intensified this challenge further. Younger professionals no longer absorb organisational culture, political judgement and leadership behaviour through daily proximity in the same way previous generations did. Informal mentoring and observational learning have weakened significantly in many organisations.
Research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development suggests concerns around career progression and developmental access remain particularly strong amongst younger employees operating in hybrid environments.[1]
Artificial intelligence may deepen the issue further if organisations focus exclusively on automation and productivity without considering the human infrastructure leadership depends upon. AI can streamline analysis and process, but it cannot easily replicate trust, contextual judgement, emotional intelligence or the credibility developed through lived organisational experience.
That matters because increasingly the differentiator in leadership is not technical competence alone, but judgement under pressure.
Boards are beginning to recognise this. The Financial Reporting Council continues to emphasise succession planning and workforce resilience as critical governance priorities,[2] while the Institute of Directors has highlighted growing board-level concern around leadership capability and organisational resilience.[3]
This is no longer simply an HR issue. It is becoming a strategic business issue.
Leadership shortages cannot be solved quickly because commercially credible leadership capability takes years to develop. Organisations that weaken their internal succession structures for too long may eventually discover that replacing experience externally becomes increasingly difficult and significantly more expensive.
For executive search firms, these shifts are changing both the nature of leadership assessment and the conversations taking place in boardrooms.
Increasingly, clients are not simply asking for executives with sector expertise or operational track records. They are looking for leaders capable of navigating ambiguity, complexity, workforce fragmentation and sustained organisational pressure without destabilising culture or losing strategic clarity.
At the same time, many organisations are beginning to recognise that external hiring alone cannot permanently compensate for weakened internal succession pipelines. Recruitment can solve immediate capability gaps, but it cannot entirely replace the long-term cultivation of leadership culture within an organisation itself.
This is why leadership assessment is becoming more nuanced and significantly more human. Emotional intelligence, adaptability, resilience, judgement and cultural credibility are no longer peripheral leadership characteristics discussed politely during interviews before everyone returns to EBITDA and delivery metrics. Increasingly, they are becoming central predictors of executive effectiveness.
The organisations that will outperform over the next decade are unlikely to be those that simply become the leanest or most technologically automated. More probably, they will be the businesses capable of balancing efficiency with humanity, transformation with continuity and innovation with long-term capability development. Ultimately, organisations do not thrive merely because they remove layers, they thrive because they continue producing leaders capable of carrying responsibility, building trust and making sound decisions in environments where certainty itself has become increasingly rare.
That may prove to be one of the defining executive search challenges of the next decade.
[1] Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), Flexible and Hybrid Working Practices in the UK, 2025.
[2] Financial Reporting Council (FRC), Review of Corporate Governance Reporting, UK, 2025.
[3] Institute of Directors (IoD), Director Sentiment Monitor and Board Priorities Survey, UK, 2025.
[4] Deloitte, Global Human Capital Trends, 2025.
[5] World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report, 2025.
Last month, Friisberg welcomed members of its Executive Committee to our London office for a strategic leadership meeting focused on the future direction of the firm and the opportunities emerging across global markets.
The discussions reflected both the strength of our international partnership and the ambition that continues to shape our growth strategy. With increasing client demand for cross-border leadership advisory and executive search support, the meeting centred on how we continue to scale as one integrated global firm while preserving the entrepreneurial agility and local market expertise that define Friisberg.
A key focus of the meeting was the continued expansion of our international footprint, including plans to strengthen our presence in the United States and the Nordics. As leadership challenges become increasingly global in nature, clients are seeking partners who can combine international reach with deep sector expertise and trusted local relationships. Expanding our presence in strategically important markets is therefore a natural evolution of our long-term growth strategy.
The Executive Committee also discussed investment priorities across leadership advisory, digital visibility, cross-border collaboration and operational integration. In an environment where organisations are navigating geopolitical uncertainty, technological disruption and changing workforce expectations, leadership has become one of the defining differentiators of business performance. Firms advising at board and executive level must therefore evolve with equal pace and clarity.
What continues to distinguish Friisberg is our collective strength. Our growth is not driven by scale for its own sake, but by a shared commitment to quality, long-term relationships and trusted advisory work at the highest levels of leadership. Across our international offices, we continue to see increasing collaboration between teams, deeper sector specialisation and growing momentum in multinational assignments.
This latest London meeting reinforced a clear strategic direction: to continue building a truly integrated international firm with the capability, credibility and cultural alignment required to support clients across complex leadership challenges worldwide.
As global markets continue to shift, we remain focused on what matters most: helping organisations identify, attract and develop exceptional leadership capable of driving sustainable growth and transformation.
Our conversations in London reflected confidence, ambition and alignment across the partnership. More importantly, they reflected a firm that continues to invest in the future with purpose and clarity.
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