Leadership turnover at the top of corporate America is accelerating. The average tenure globally of outgoing CEOs was 7.1 years in 2025, down from a high of 8.3 years in 2021, according to Russell Reynolds CEO Turnover Index. Lower tolerance for poor performance or conduct, rising activist pressure and intensifying technological, geopolitical, demographic and stakeholder demands are reshaping the role—favoring agility over stability. For boards, the implication is clear: CEO succession is becoming both more frequent and more consequential.
Yet, while many corporate boards profess a desire for “future-ready” CEOs, their selection processes often remain traditional and backward-looking. In a world defined by complexity, uncertainty and disruption, that mismatch creates risk. Boards can strengthen succession and selection by embedding future readiness as the primary lens across the hiring process. Four practical shifts can move boards closer to that goal now.
1. Start with the Future, Not the Résumé
Hiring a future-ready CEO begins by anchoring the search in the company’s future context, not its past. Even amid uncertainty about enterprise vision or strategy, boards can clarify the key inflection points ahead: AI and gen AI adoption, technological disruption, shifting competitive dynamics, supply volatility, changing consumer behaviors and evolving stakeholder expectations. With alignment on where the company needs to go, boards can translate those imperatives into the capabilities and traits that matter most.
This future-first approach flips the traditional model on its head. Rather than scanning résumés for pedigree and proven playbooks, boards should ask which capabilities enable success in ambiguous, volatile environments. Leaders who demonstrate learning agility, comfort with ambiguity, narrative-building, energy creation, focus and simplification and sound judgment during structural change or crisis are often better positioned for future performance than those whose accomplishments sit firmly in the rearview mirror.
2. Test for Judgment, Not Just Track Record
Strong results are necessary but not sufficient. Decisions made under pressure or uncertainty reveal far more about readiness than outcomes achieved in stable conditions. Boards should probe how candidates made consequential calls with incomplete information, balanced near-term performance with longer-term renewal, adapted when conditions shifted unexpectedly, elevated their teams and proactively managed reputational risk.
Exploring candidates’ decision narratives—how they weighed tradeoffs, incorporated stakeholder perspectives, learned from customers and competitors and corrected course after missteps—offers insight into how they think, not just what they delivered. This is often the clearest indicator of cognitive agility in volatile environments.
3. Assess the CEO-Chair Dynamic Before Day One
The CEO–chair relationship is critical to sustained value creation and effective navigation of future risks and opportunities. A future-ready CEO needs a chair who can challenge constructively, translate board expectations into focus and act as a strategic partner.
During selection, boards should probe candidates’ philosophy for working with the board, their approach to sharing bad news and their expectations for roles, time allocation and early engagement, particularly in the first 100 days. Boards should also pressure-test how candidates respond to challenge, demonstrate empathy and listening, and show candor and appropriate vulnerability.
4. Look for Enterprise Leadership, Not Functional Excellence
Finally, future-ready CEOs must be enterprise leaders—true “connectors of dots.” Disruption cuts across silos, and functional excellence alone rarely equips leaders to align vision, strategy, culture and execution. Boards should seek evidence that candidates bridge silos, build collaborative leadership teams, reduce unproductive friction and deliver systemic change.
Enterprise leadership also requires the courage to challenge legacy thinking, including one’s own. Boards should ask how candidates have confronted entrenched assumptions, reduced low–value-added complexity and introduced fresh thinking while using organizational history to make change stick. These qualities distinguish leaders who manage complexity from those who shape it.
Future-ready leadership is the product of deliberate board governance. Embedding future readiness into CEO succession requires rigor to test for judgment, resilience and adaptability; imagination to move beyond résumé pedigree; and courage to prioritize mid-term value creation over short-term defensibility. Boards that internalize this mindset will not only hire for the future—they will help shape it.
