Evaluate a new CEO against the firm’s written mandate—not against a generic checklist or the mere visibility of their first moves. Start by establishing whether the firm expects continuity, strategic evolution, or corrective change; clarify the CEO’s authority; then assess how well strategy, execution, governance, client confidence, partner alignment, talent, and communication fit together.
Set the mandate before judging results
A new CEO rarely inherits a clean slate. Spencer Stuart’s guidance on leadership succession in professional services recommends clarifying the strategy before defining the organization, the role, and the ideal leadership profile. That order helps distinguish inherited conditions from decisions the new CEO can reasonably influence.
Before assessing performance, write down:
- The firm’s starting point: its established strategic principles, current priorities, and significant constraints.
- The intended change: whether the board or partnership expects continuity, evolution, or corrective action.
- The CEO’s remit: responsibilities, decision rights, accountability, and the relationship with the board and partnership.
- The evaluation period: when each commitment can reasonably be assessed, without treating early announcements as completed results.
Highwire’s 2026 transition-communications framework uses the categories continuity, evolution, and corrective change. They are useful ways to frame a mandate, not an exhaustive taxonomy or a validated performance test. A CEO maintaining direction should not be judged by the same standard as one hired to repair a troubled course.
Assess whether the strategy fits the firm
Judge strategic choices against the firm’s actual structure and exposure, not against whether they sound ambitious. Heidrick & Struggles highlights the complexity of professional-services firms’ geographic and service-line structures, changing ownership and alliance arrangements, and the effects of mergers and acquisitions. It also points to AI-driven changes in service delivery, including automation and productization, alongside regulatory, governance, ethical, and profitability considerations.
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For each major strategic choice, ask:
- Does it follow from the firm’s starting position and the agreed mandate?
- Does it account for the realities of the firm’s service lines, geographies, ownership, alliances, and any relevant M&A activity?
- Are proposed changes to service delivery—including AI initiatives—linked to a clear business rationale and the firm’s capabilities?
- Do investment and operating choices support the stated direction?
- Are regulatory, governance, ethical, and profitability implications considered alongside growth ambitions?
An AI announcement, expansion plan, or restructuring is evidence of a choice, not by itself evidence that the choice is sound or well executed. Look for a coherent connection between the stated strategy, resource allocation, operating decisions, and subsequent progress.
Use a firm-specific scorecard, not a universal formula
The following comparison axes synthesize practitioner guidance from Spencer Stuart, Heidrick & Struggles, Baker Tilly, Highwire, and McKinsey. Record the agreed commitment, the evidence observed, and what remains unresolved for each area. The sources do not establish universal thresholds or a validated scorecard for professional-services CEOs.
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| Area | What to assess | Evidence to document |
|---|---|---|
| Strategic coherence | Whether the direction fits the firm’s baseline, market conditions, and mandate. | Stated priorities and the rationale for major strategic choices. |
| Execution and resources | Whether investment, people, and operating choices align with the direction. | Resource decisions and progress against commitments, distinguishing plans from completed actions. |
| Leadership and governance | Whether the CEO aligns the top team and works constructively with the board, partnership, and governance structures. | Observable decisions and interactions, considered in light of the CEO’s actual authority. |
| Client and talent continuity | Whether client confidence, service continuity, partner alignment, and talent are being managed. | Evidence of relationship continuity, partner engagement, and efforts to retain and develop talent. |
| Risk, regulation, and ethics | Whether strategic choices account for relevant obligations and risks. | How those considerations are reflected in decisions, governance, and execution. |
| Communication | Whether internal and external stakeholders receive a clear, consistent account of what is changing and why. | Whether messages match the mandate, decisions, and observed outcomes. |
McKinsey’s CEO Excellence framework identifies responsibilities that include aligning the organization, leading the top team, working with the board, and representing the firm externally. These are useful leadership dimensions to observe, but they do not replace the firm-specific mandate.
Account for clients, partners, and talent
Professional-services firms depend heavily on expertise, reputation, culture, and client trust. Baker Tilly’s succession-planning guidance notes that client relationships may be connected to individual partners and that leadership decisions can affect ownership, compensation, voting rights, and retirement economics. That means a strategy can be coherent on paper yet create execution risks if it disrupts important relationships or leaves partners unclear about governance and incentives.
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Assess whether the CEO is:
- Maintaining service continuity and client confidence during the transition.
- Engaging partners and governance bodies in decisions that affect their responsibilities or interests.
- Explaining changes to ownership, compensation, voting rights, or retirement economics where those matters are implicated.
- Retaining and developing the people and expertise the strategy depends on.
Do not treat one retention figure, client reaction, or partner dispute as a complete verdict. Consider what happened, which parts of the firm were affected, and whether the CEO had authority to address the underlying issue.
Check leadership with more than impressions
High-profile speeches and personal style can shape perceptions, but evaluation should also draw on structured and observable evidence. Heidrick & Struggles describes executive assessment, psychometrics, and 360-degree feedback as possible tools. These can add perspective; the cited guidance does not establish any one instrument as decisive.
Use assessment results alongside evidence of how the CEO leads the top team, makes and explains decisions, works with the board and partnership, and represents the firm to external stakeholders. Keep the distinction clear between a tool that informs judgment and a result that proves performance.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Judge transition communication against reality
Communication should reflect the transition’s purpose. For continuity, stakeholders need to understand what remains steady; for evolution, what is changing and why; for corrective action, what problem the change is intended to address. Highwire recommends aligning internal and external communications and presenting the outgoing leader’s legacy alongside the incoming CEO’s mandate where appropriate.
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Highwire’s EVP and Professional Services Sector Lead, Keri Toomey, said: “In professional services, reputation and relationships are the business. A CEO transition puts both in the spotlight simultaneously. Done right, it’s a chance to deepen trust with every audience that matters, and to show the market exactly who you are and where you’re headed.” Treat this as specialist communications guidance, not proof that a polished announcement predicts successful leadership. Compare stakeholder messages with the decisions and outcomes that follow.
Keep succession-planning statistics in their proper context
Deloitte’s December 2023 Board Practices Quarterly reported survey responses from 102 public companies across industries and company sizes. In that survey, 34% of large-cap respondents and 56% of mid-cap respondents reported including candidate criteria in planned CEO succession plans. The report also said nearly half of respondents reported candidate criteria and/or development and readiness plans, with differences by market capitalization.
Those figures describe succession-plan contents in a general public-company survey. They are not specific to professional-services firms and do not measure the effectiveness of a sitting CEO. They can provide context about succession planning, but they are not performance benchmarks.
Make the evaluation useful over time
- Document the baseline and mandate. Record the inherited situation, the intended type of transition, the CEO’s authority, and the priorities agreed by the firm’s relevant governance bodies.
- Translate priorities into observable evidence. For each priority, note what decisions, resource choices, or stakeholder outcomes would show progress. Do not invent a universal threshold where the firm has not set one.
- Review each scorecard area separately. Distinguish strategy from execution, and leadership conduct from business outcomes. Record evidence and unresolved questions rather than collapsing them into a single impression.
- Interpret outcomes in context. Consider the firm’s structure, external conditions, inherited commitments, and the CEO’s actual decision rights before attributing a result to the leader.
- Revisit the mandate when it changes. If the firm’s circumstances or expectations shift, update the evaluation criteria transparently instead of quietly moving the goalposts.
This approach makes the assessment more fair and actionable: it clarifies what the CEO was asked to do, what the firm can observe, and where the evidence remains insufficient for a confident conclusion.
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