When to Promote, When to Hire, and When to Accept That the Role Needs a Different Person
The leadership vacancy or the leadership role being performed below the level the organisation requires, presents the CEO or CHRO with three options that are often conflated and rarely analysed with the clarity the decision deserves.
The internal promotion: elevate someone already in the organisation, betting that their existing knowledge and cultural fit outweigh whatever capability gaps the new scope will expose.
The external hire: bring in someone whose demonstrated leadership capability matches the role requirements, accepting the integration cost in exchange for the capability certainty.
The reframing: accept that neither the available internal candidates nor the standard external hire will produce the outcome needed, and redesign the role, the structure, or both.
Most Nigerian organisations default to the first option, internal promotion without clearly establishing whether the person being promoted is actually the right person for the new scope, or simply the most available option. When the promotion produces the wrong outcome, the organisation then moves to the second option external hire, under urgency and with a failure case as the context for the new hire’s arrival. The third option, reframing, is almost never considered.
The decision framework that navigates this well starts with the right question.
The Question That Determines the Decision
The right question is not “who do we have who could do this?” It is “what does this role need to produce, and what capability is required to produce it?”
Answering the second question first, before considering the available internal candidates produces a capability specification that can be evaluated honestly. The internal candidate who meets the specification should be promoted. The one who does not whose genuine strengths are different from what the specification requires should not be promoted into a role designed to expose those gaps. Not because they are not excellent, but because the mismatch is unfair to them and expensive for the organisation.
Succession planning research from AIHR confirms that only 34% of organisations consider their succession planning process highly effective, a statistic that reflects precisely this failure: the majority of organisations promote without a capability specification, and then manage the consequences.
When Internal Promotion Is the Right Decision
Internal promotion works when three conditions are present:
The candidate has demonstrated, in their current role, the specific capabilities the new role requires, not similar capabilities, but the specific ones. The sales director who has demonstrated the strategic thinking, stakeholder management, and cross-functional leadership that the CCO role requires is ready. The one who has been an excellent sales manager without these dimensions is not.
The capability gaps are real but developable within the timeframe the role requires. The new CCO who needs to develop board-level financial literacy has twelve months to do so if the business conditions allow it. If Q4 is three months away and the board relationship is critical to Q4 performance, twelve months is too long.
The transition plan includes specific development investment, not just the assumption that the new scope will develop the person on its own. The most common reason internal promotions underperform is that the development investment promised at the point of promotion is not delivered the new role’s demands consume all the available time, and the development falls away.
When External Hire Is the Right Decision
External hire is the right decision when the capability gap is real and not developable in the timeframe the role requires, when the team needs a signal that the organisation takes the role seriously enough to invest in finding the best person rather than the most convenient one, and when the cultural change the role is supposed to drive requires a perspective that the internal candidate, embedded in the existing culture, cannot provide.
The external hire is not a verdict on the internal candidates. It is a statement about what the role requires and what the timeline allows.
When the Role Needs to Be Redesigned
The third option, reframing is indicated when the vacancy reveals that the role as designed is not producing the outcomes the organisation needs. The head of operations role that has been vacant for six months without seriously degrading the organisation’s operational performance tells you something about whether the role as designed was necessary. The leadership vacancy that every candidate declines tells you something about whether the role as designed is liveable.
When the reframe is indicated, the hire that follows is for a different role, one that has been thoughtfully redesigned to produce the outcomes the original role failed to produce.
Revent Technologies works with Nigerian companies on role design as well as candidate sourcing because the placement that follows a poorly designed role brief produces a poorly matched hire.
Whether you need an internal promotion plan, an external search, or a role design conversation, Revent Technologies is the partner Nigerian companies use to navigate leadership transitions well. Start the conversation before Q4 closes the options.
Start here → www.reventtechnologies.com
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