When Good Recruitment isn’t enough

Why organisational readiness determines whether experienced managers can succeed

Growing businesses often reach a point where the founder recognises that the organisation can no longer depend solely on personal oversight. Increasing complexity, expanding customer expectations and the demands of growth create a need for experienced managers who can introduce structure, build systems and develop the organisation’s capacity for its next phase.

One fast-growing garment manufacturer in Vietnam reached precisely that point. The founder had built a successful business through energy, determination and close personal involvement. As the company expanded, he committed to strengthening the leadership team by recruiting experienced managers from outside the organisation.

The appointments appeared sensible. Some candidates brought extensive industry knowledge, while others had led functions in much larger organisations. Collectively, they represented a significant investment in professional management capability. Within approximately seven months, however, six senior appointments had ended, each within the first three months.

From a distance, the explanation appeared straightforward: recruitment had failed. The company seemed to have made a succession of poor hiring decisions and needed to improve its selection process. Our review produced a more complicated conclusion. One appointment represented a genuine recruitment mistake, while the remaining departures arose from different combinations of operational pressure, informal authority, conflicting expectations and organisational instability. The common factor was less the capability of the people recruited than the environment they entered.

Six appointments, six different outcomes

The first appointment was a non-Vietnamese-speaking Technical Manager with the knowledge to improve manufacturing capability. His role quickly expanded beyond its original scope as operational pressures mounted. Instead of concentrating on technical leadership, he was drawn into day-to-day factory issues while also encountering long-established local relationships and informal authority structures that had never been made explicit. His capability was not the central issue; the role and the environment changed around him before he had established a position from which he could succeed. He resigned before completing probation.

The second appointment, a Senior Human Resources Manager, produced a different result. She was Vietnamese, had manufacturing experience and had previously led HR within a large automotive business. The organisation largely protected her opportunity to observe the business and understand the role, yet she struggled with its pace and complexity and failed probation. This appointment demonstrated that a sound transition cannot compensate for a genuine mismatch between the individual and the demands of the position.

The third appointment appeared considerably stronger. An experienced Senior Merchandising Manager with previous experience in Vietnam joined under an onboarding plan that allowed the first month for observation. Operational workload soon displaced that plan, and major customers were transferred to her within weeks. She inherited responsibility before understanding the business, lacked experienced support staff and worked alongside another senior manager who perceived her arrival as a threat. The tensions were visible inside the organisation but remained largely unspoken. She resigned during probation.

The fourth appointment involved recruiting an experienced Vietnamese Procurement Manager to establish a professional procurement function rather than continue purchasing as it had always been performed. A structured transition had been prepared, beginning with observation of existing workloads and the design of the future department before operational responsibility transferred. Within days, a key resignation created an immediate capability gap. Purchasing responsibilities were handed over, conflicting instructions emerged from senior leaders and the strategic purpose of the appointment was overtaken by the need to maintain daily continuity. She resigned shortly after the new General Manager commenced.

The fifth appointment was that General Manager. She had almost a decade of experience running a foreign-owned garment manufacturer in Ho Chi Minh City and had known the founder for many years. Her mandate was to build the management systems required by a growing business rather than become absorbed in daily operations. Staffing shortages and continuing operational difficulties altered the role almost immediately. As she tried to introduce change, she encountered informal relationships and unwritten practices that had developed over many years. The resulting disruption contributed to significant instability within the factories, and after approximately two months she and the founder agreed that the appointment should end.

The final appointment involved a new Human Resources Manager joining while the company was already dealing with a difficult payroll transition, the resignation of the payroll administrator and discussions about outsourcing payroll. Before she had time to understand the organisation, she became part of a sensitive dispute involving systems, responsibilities and the future direction of the HR function. Her employment ended almost as quickly as it had begun.

Each departure could be explained individually. One manager appeared unable to cope with the role, another encountered operational overload, and others became caught in internal politics or organisational disruption. Only when the six appointments were considered together did the more important question emerge: when experienced people repeatedly encounter different problems inside the same business, the organisation itself becomes part of the explanation.

The two plans behind every appointment

As we reviewed the sequence, it became clear that every appointment was governed by two plans. The first was the deliberate plan created during recruitment. It described why the person was being appointed, what the organisation expected them to achieve and how their responsibilities would transfer as they learned the business. In several cases, this plan was thoughtful and consistent with good management practice.

The second plan emerged only after the manager arrived. It was created by vacancies, customer demands, production problems, conflicting instructions and the countless immediate decisions required to keep a growing business operating. This operational plan was rarely written down, yet it increasingly determined how the manager spent time, which responsibilities were transferred and what success came to mean.

The first ninety days became the point at which these two plans met. The deliberate plan represented strategic intent, while the operational plan represented the organisation’s current capability and pressures. Each compromise appeared reasonable in isolation: a customer required attention, a vacant role needed cover, or a production problem could not wait. Collectively, those decisions redefined senior appointments before the individuals had gained enough knowledge, authority or support to perform the roles for which they had been recruited.

Looking beyond recruitment

The organisation had genuinely reached the stage at which it required experienced leadership, but many of the conditions needed for that leadership to take root had not yet been established. Formal reporting relationships often differed from the way decisions were actually made. Informal influence sometimes carried greater weight than formal authority. Long-standing relationships helped the business function, yet they were difficult for incoming managers to see or interpret. Senior leaders also held different expectations about when new managers should observe, assume responsibility and begin making changes.

These conditions are common in founder-led businesses that have grown quickly. Informal arrangements can work extremely well while the founder remains able to resolve ambiguity personally, mediate disagreements and coordinate priorities. As the organisation expands, the same arrangements become harder to sustain and almost impossible for an incoming executive to understand without explicit explanation and visible support.

The case also exposed a common misunderstanding about onboarding. An organisation may describe the first month as an observation period while simultaneously expecting the new manager to deliver operational results, establish relationships, cover vacancies and introduce change. Each expectation appears reasonable, but together they can become incompatible. The transition plan then survives in principle while disappearing in practice.

The first ninety days test the organisation as well

A probation period is usually described as a test of the new employee. This case showed that it also tests the organisation. The manager is discovering how decisions are really made, whether authority matches accountability, how disagreement is handled and whether senior leaders remain committed to the purpose of the appointment once operational pressures intensify.

Where the transition is protected and the individual still cannot perform, probation provides valuable evidence that recruitment was unsuccessful, as happened with the first HR appointment. Where the agreed transition is repeatedly overridden, the result reveals much less about the person’s underlying capability. It shows instead whether the organisation could create and preserve the conditions it promised during recruitment.

This distinction matters because the wrong diagnosis produces the wrong remedy. Treating every departure as a recruitment failure leads to different recruiters, revised job descriptions or more elaborate interviews. Those measures may improve selection, but they cannot resolve conflicting authority, unspoken resistance, unstable responsibilities or a recurring tendency to redirect strategic appointments into operational gaps.

Recruitment is only half the investment

Experienced executives are recruited because management expects them to improve the organisation rather than merely maintain it. That expectation introduces change, and change requires more than capable people. It requires clarity about authority, alignment among senior leaders, realistic sequencing of responsibility, visible sponsorship and enough stability for the incoming manager to understand the business before being expected to transform it.

Recruitment therefore creates an opportunity rather than a result. The organisation must protect that opportunity through the early months, particularly when immediate operational demands begin competing with the strategic purpose of the appointment. This does not mean shielding senior managers from reality. It means deciding consciously which pressures they should absorb, which responsibilities should remain elsewhere and which elements of the transition plan are essential to the long-term value of the role.

The lesson

Good recruitment remains essential, but recruitment ends on the employee’s first day. Everything that follows belongs to the organisation. In this case, one appointment genuinely represented a poor hiring decision. The other departures showed how operational pressure, informal relationships, competing priorities and inconsistent authority can overwhelm sensible appointments and well-designed onboarding plans.

The deeper lesson is that recruitment identifies capability, while organisational readiness determines whether that capability has a genuine opportunity to survive, establish authority and produce value.