Episode Notes

In this episode, hosts Mino Vlachos, Managing Director and Co-Founder of The 3Peak Group, and Shruti Chaudhary, leader at global recruitment firm Avomind, dive into one of the most pivotal questions for growing companies: How do you know when it’s time to hire a senior leader?

Drawing on their distinct vantage points—organizational consulting and global executive recruitment—Mino and Shruti explore why companies hire too late, hire too fast, or hire for the wrong reasons. They break down how hiring dynamics shift across startups, mid-sized companies, and large corporates, and they share practical strategies to avoid common pitfalls like crisis-driven hiring, role overload, and internal dysfunction.

Whether you're navigating exponential startup growth, building scalable structure in a mid-sized company, or steering a mature corporate through transformation, this episode helps you understand the signals, risks, and organizational truths that determine when senior leadership is truly needed.

This is Part 1 of a four-episode series on finding and hiring senior leaders in high-growth environments.

Podcast Highlights

Startup vs. Corporate Hiring Realities: Why large organizations hire for transformation or succession—while startups hire when growth outpaces capacity.
The Hidden Cost of Waiting Too Long: How burnout, chaos, and internal conflicts emerge when leaders delay critical hires.
The Danger of Over-Hiring: Why hiring too fast, especially in startups, leads to unrealistic promises, misalignment, and expensive layoffs.
Role Overload & Organizational Dysfunction: The surprising ways having one person fill five roles quietly destabilizes the entire system.
Critical Roles & Succession Thinking: How to identify which roles create outsized organizational risk if left unfilled or dependent on one person.
Culture and Complexity: Why senior hiring in corporates takes longer—and why integration challenges can derail even strong talent.
The Two Must-Ask Questions Before Every Senior Hire:

Why are we hiring this leader?
What future outcome are we trying to enable by bringing them in?

Truth as a Leadership Tool: How facing organizational reality—stress, capacity issues, burnout, relational complexity—is the only way to make timely hiring decisions.
“Don’t wait for the airplanes to arrive.” A vivid reminder that crisis-driven hiring is always too late.

Transcript

Mino Vlachos: Hello, my name is Mino Vlachos and I am the managing director and co founder of the 3Peak Group. With 3Peak we work with CEOs of mid sized companies to support them during their growth phase. So we help them to scale from a relational system where everyone knows everyone to an organized system where we enable organized structures but maintaining human connection.

Shruti Chaudhary: Hi everyone, I'm Shruti Chaudhary. I am part of Avomind. I lead the Dark team Within our mind. We are a boutique recruitment firm focusing on commercial strategy and analytics talent globally. We love working with companies that are looking to expand into new areas, looking for very niche roles or scaling up very, very quickly. Speed is our core value and we work globally. We have teams based in Berlin, Jakarta, Barcelona and Toronto. We do come with a very extensive global network and I'm super happy to.

Mino Vlachos: Wonderful. And what I love about us working together, Shruti 3 Peak Avomind is we get to see similar topics but from two very different angles. So we support with consulting companies and some of the kind of inner decision making and capabilities that they're building. And then Avomind is really helping with the recruitment and supporting them to find the right talent. So our mini series is going to be focused on finding the right senior leaders. So one of the core competencies and needs of organizations as they're building and growing is finding the right senior leaders. So we're going to break this miniseries into four parts and we're going to be looking at four different components when it comes to finding the right senior leaders. So our first topic of the miniseries is well, how do you know when to look for a senior leader? So when can you identify the need for a senior leader? And this is a very important topic because if you wait too long then you risk not having the right people in the right roles. There could be burnout, you're not able to actually deliver what you're looking for. But if you over hire too many people, so you're hiring too many people, you have a lot of cost on the business and that starts to create a different kind of drag force as you're trying to grow and scale. And so I want to open up a little bit of this conversation by talking about different types of organizations. The hiring needs of a startup versus a big corporate are going to be probably, I'm going to assume, pretty different. But I'm happy that I have the expert here. So Shruti, can you help us understand a little bit of how does an organizational size kind of start to impact when we think about hiring senior leaders.

Shruti Chaudhary: Absolutely. So like you rightly said, startups would vary significantly when it comes to hiring a leader as compared to a big corporate. What I've seen in big corporates is that they usually have a very solid succession plan in place in a lot of cases, which means they look for people internally and it's only when there is a case of a replacement or they're looking to transform businesses or they're looking for a new skill set that they look outside of their organization. This could mean they're looking to say, improve technological implementation. AI is a big topic these days. A lot of organizations are trying to transform on the AI front. So that's when bigger organizations would usually look outside for a new leader. Startups, on the other hand, I would say every time the word growth comes into the picture, that's when they would hire. It could mean they are introducing a new product line. It could mean they are growing in a different market. It could mean the company size is organically increasing and they need more leaders to lead people within. There could be a lot of mergers and acquisitions that bring in new leaders. So for startups, the reasons of hiring would vary as compared to, to a much bigger organization. And I'd love to hear from you as well on how it works within a bigger corporate. Right. Because that's very, very different how the decision making takes place on hiring a leader there.

Mino Vlachos: Yeah. To your point, I believe with larger organizations, they typically have at that point in time, like pretty well structured organizational charts. So they understand they've broken down how to operationalize their mission and how to make money into roles. So there is this like abstract thing. If we have to go do a mission or make money, how do we actually do that? At this point in your maturity, you've done it so many times in a way that, you know, there are certain roles needed to be able to do that. So a lot of it is backfilling. There's some level of churn. Right. So people come in and out. And so, you know, okay, I need to fill this role. Sometimes there's like small reorganizations or even large reorganizations that can reimagine the kind of organizational chart. But everything at that point is so systematized, more or less, and you have lots of consultants coming in and out. It's pretty clear, I think when you, when it's time to hire for a role, I think actually the large organizations, what they try to is, can we get away with like having less roles, having less bureaucracy, making one person do the Job of two. So it's a little bit of like, but they know what roles and what functions are needed. I think the big difference if we go to the other kind of extreme with a startup is oftentimes, and we're going to open this topic even more in the, in the second kind of episode we go in when it comes to roles and structure, they just don't even know what roles they really need. And it's such a dynamic, kind of quick changing environment that even though the roles that you do have are changing monumentally day to day.

Mino Vlachos: And the level of complexity can increase very fast. So I think that's where it gets like very tricky because like what are you, what are you hiring for? And then we go into other kind of debates around capability versus potential. So are you hiring someone that's ready to do the job right now? Are you hiring someone that you can train to do the job? Are you hiring someone that you think could be a long term, you know, grow in the organization for many years, like a large kind of institution or corporation, typically they have a more long term view so they can like hire someone and train them and see their potential and they stay with the company for 20, 30 years. Whereas like a startup it's a little bit more, you want capability. Right now you don't have a lot of money. So if you're going to spend your money, you want someone to be able to do the job right now. And so it's I think a bit of a different viewpoint. And then for mid sized companies you're somewhere in the middle of all of that where you're starting to establish some structure, you've already figured some things out. But like it's a lot of these questions become different and difficult for, you know, a different reason because you're somewhere in the middle.

Shruti Chaudhary: And that also makes me think that it's very important for all organizations to do an internal assessment of sorts to figure out when is the right time to hire a leader. For startups, a lot of times it's a lot of pressure, external pressure, investor pressure, board pressure, and they end up making the wrong decision, which kind of is a cost at the end for both parties, not just them, but also the person they hire. So that's an important factor which I see missing in many organizations. They do not really identify the why of hiring a leader. And that's something that's very important. It could mean analyzing where they currently stand, what does future look like for them. Like you said for corporates, they could plan long term startups may not be as long term, but they still need to kind of identify where the gap is and what they're trying to accomplish by bringing this person in.

Mino Vlachos: Yeah, One of the risks I've seen in the more startup or even medium sized business in hiring is being late. So it's tough. I really do understand. I also founder of a startup, so I get it is you, you have limited resources, especially if you don't have investors or you have limited funds. So you, and you build this kind of identity and capability of like, we'll just solve it ourselves. We'll solve it ourselves. So there's this like, mentality of like, I don't need external help. And at some point, usually you're allowing problems in crisis to become the catalyst of like, okay, I have a crisis, now I have to go hire someone and that's too late. So I once heard a saying, and it's, it's for better or worse. It's a military kind of analogy, but kind of a mentor once told me, if you hear the planes coming, it's already too late. So if like you hear the warplanes coming, you've already missed the window to kind of defend yourself. And so there is a little bit of this. Like if you hold off too long, for instance, one of the kind of key questions people often ask is when is the right time to hire an HR manager or someone who can do kind of HR processes. And of all the functions, I believe that's the one in early days that's seen as like, we'll do that last or we're really going to wait until the people problems start. Because in the beginning you feel like you can sit down at a table, everyone, and just talk things out. And there is no perfect formula for that. I don't think there's like a perfect moment to hire someone. But if you're waiting for a lot of internal conflicts and dramas and personal relationships or like romantic relationships, if you wait for all of that to start cooking, then your system can get easily hijacked by kind of a personal relational, family dynamic. And then your business, the business side will suffer. So sometimes bringing in that structure, bringing in that person earlier rather than later will save you a lot of time, money, headaches in the long run.

Shruti Chaudhary: Absolutely. I so echo with that last point that you mentioned through example. In one of my previous organizations, they waited for the longest time super selective about hiring the HR team. And then within no time, things were just falling apart very, very quickly. And it was mostly the internal dynamics that contributed to it which ultimately affects the launch of whatever you're building or the business like you said. So completely agree with that. What are some things you think an organization can do to be more ready? When is it that they start planning? What, what do they do to be more ready to accept this change or bring on a new leader?

Mino Vlachos: We'll go deeper in this, in the next subtopic but I really believe it starts with having a very honest assessment of what roles are needed. So like what tasks need to be completed within the organization. And there's a lot of times in the startup and even medium sized business there is this tendency to put many roles on one person, one individual. And I get it, it makes sense. And that is probably the, the only way to maybe even do a startup is you have someone or many people who do many different types of role. But at least start to account honestly about like what are the roles that this person's doing? So even draw a rudimentary organizational chart and say that like this person is doing the, you know, is acting as the director of marketing and the social media manager and the junior analyst. And, and, and if you can start to honestly account for all the different roles that one person is doing, then you can start to imagine a world where actually how do we alleviate this person of some of those tasks? Whether it's hiring someone, whether it's AI, whether it's. But you, you have to start I think actually really looking at a functional view of like what's happening. And then al also assess like how are people doing? Are they stressed? Are they overwhelmed? What happens if a person leaves? Like they decide to take a holiday or sick leave or they quit? Like especially like some critical roles. Can you highlight which ones are the critical roles so that like you can start to think a little bit more strategically and get out of just like the doing, doing, doing. And I find that a lot of dysfunction really ends up happening when someone has multiple roles. That's like where you end up seeing a lot of organizational dysfunction again and again and again. This concept of kind of like key roles, do you find that in your kind of end of things do you find like there are some roles that are highlighted as more crucial or key to how operation runs?

Shruti Chaudhary: Absolutely. And I think that's one challenge also that a lot of companies face. They are not really, they don't really define the right critical roles. Everyone is doing everything at the same time which leads to a lot of chaos. I think key roles, I would say all the C levels right. In a startup every person is important. And as they grow, all C levels will start getting more importance. Now it also depends on who is doing well within the organization versus who is not. Because the moment the responsibilities automatically kind of go out of balance in that case and the person who's kind of taking on more, doing fairly well, they start taking up more, more importance within the organization from a revenue point, from a PNL point business standpoint. And then if that person decides to leave tomorrow, where is the organization going to stand? So that balance I feel is difficult to figure out and maintain. And that's where a clear demarcation or definition of roles could help.

Mino Vlachos: It sounds a little bit like we are talking on some version of succession planning.

Shruti Chaudhary: True, understandable. And I feel like that's also one aspect that organizations should keep in mind. Not necessarily always possible, but that's definitely a food for thought. Right.

Mino Vlachos: So we've talked about like there are different environments depending on the size of the organization. Right. And that with one of the risks probably at the beginning is being late to certain hires or certain identifying certain critical roles and hiring for those. I think there is like a risk of the opposite of like, at least in the, in the early startup phases of over hiring. So you have tons of like employees. You promise them the world. I was just speaking with a friend recently and they were working for a startup and there were all these promises of like equity and like you're going to be a co owner and. And ultimately they took on so many people so fast they couldn't deliver sales. They had this like incredibly wishful thinking and they had to lay everyone off. So it's this very painful I think lesson of like yeah, you also have to really manage costs and you have to be realistic and you have to look at where your sales is going and your pipeline and all of that. But there is also a risk of being too, too slow. It seems like on the, on the bigger corporate side that do you find that. I think they are very slow sometimes to hire. But the risk on the surface doesn't seem as big because it's such a big organization and it has this kind of inertia and it's kind of like still moving forward. What do you find is the kind of like risks if they're too fast or too slow on the big corporate.

Shruti Chaudhary: Side, I think if they're too flow, there definitely is impact and the biggest impact is on the teams. That's something that nobody really accounts for. The teams are under so much pressure, they are directionless. A lot of times they don't really have a backing. You look up to a leader who you'd follow. There is no such figure. Of course, the business side of things, the cost impact would be different. But from a culture perspective, there is significant impact if there is nobody to kind of lead them. If they are too fast, however, it could lead to conflicts, especially if it is too soon. There is not enough time for integration. There is not enough time for them to understand how things function. What kind of an organization is it? What's going to work here? What's not going to work here? Also, the risk of not hiring the right person. I think that's the biggest risk involved. Right. You don't spend enough time on defining who you want. You don't spend enough time maybe interviewing people or just figuring out if this person is right for you or not, and then you end up with the wrong hire. And since everything is super slow by the time this person comes on board and you figure out it's a bit too late. Yeah.

Mino Vlachos: So, yeah, what you sparked in me is like, big organizations are relationally very complex. Like, they're so complicated because there's so many people involved. So. And the culture can be sometimes hard to understand because different companies, different cultures use like, different language and like, you know, they're presenting themselves in a nice light. And so I think it takes time as someone interviewing to sort out, like, what's actually happening here. Like, do I want this job? What's actually happening in the company? What am I actually going to be inheriting? Am I getting a good team? Am I getting problems? Or, you know, there's always problems, but what problems am I really inheriting? And trying to map that in an interview process and then an onboarding process is difficult. Whereas I, I would like to believe or have seen that, like in a. Again, go to the other side of the spectrum with a startup is usually not as complex. It's just very hard because you're working a lot. Like, you're changing a lot. But on the surface, you should be able to, like, meet the key people pretty quick, including the founder. If it's small enough, you should get a pretty good picture of where the company is and where it's going. So there's like a different set of challenges in the, in the kind of startup world and understanding where things are going. But I don't think you have to necessarily sort out so much relational complexity of, like, all the entangled web of.

Shruti Chaudhary: Relationships, at least in the early stages. That's not really a key challenge that startups face. However, that challenge of overlapping responsibilities, the vision of the company not being clear. If there are four people that this person is speaking to in a startup and all four have different ideas about what they want from this person, it's probably not going to go down the best way. So startups also have challenges. Just they change faster, which kind of helps them. They have, like you said, less relational issues or, you know, less relational complexity. It's more straightforward, it's more open, Things are more transparent as compared, and so they can kind of avoid that. However, they also have their own set of challenges.

Mino Vlachos: Yeah. So if you could give one piece of advice, when we're talking about, like, how to identify the need to hire especially a senior leader and you're talking to organizations and you have this ability to give them one piece of advice, what would you tell them?

Shruti Chaudhary: I would say answer the why of hiring, why you want this person to be on board, and what is it that you're looking to achieve by bringing this person on board? That's the first step, and that's a key step that a lot of organizations.

Mino Vlachos: I think I would share in this moment, face the truth directly. So the. If the impulse is to shy away or look away from the problems, whether you're a large or small company, you're going to have a tough time identifying the need for the right people at the right time. So don't ignore that. If your team is really overburdened or it's very chaotic or like there's burnout, like, like there are a series of signals that are probably starting to go off, little red lights, and if you ignore them too long, then you're going to have a tough time. So you have to actually use, I think, some level of, like, intuition, some level of, like, sensing and feeling what's happening around you, and then look at the truth directly in the face and then you'll have a sense of like, okay, with the budget I have, can we do something to make this a bit of a better system that is more sustainable and also strong so it can weather shocks from inside and out.

Shruti Chaudhary: So basically, don't wait for the airplanes to arrive.

Mino Vlachos: Yeah, yeah. If you hear the. The planes, it's already too late. Wonderful. So thank you all for listening and we look forward to seeing you for our second part of this mini series, talking about roles and expectations.