Executive Talent Magazine
CEO departures have risen to record levels. Tenures continue to fall to new lows.
The modern CEO faces an unrelenting mix of challenges, including surging internal pressure to drive business growth and performance amid social scrutiny, political tension, and economic instability. The weight of these expectations often leads to CEO burnout or boardroom dissatisfaction, resulting in high departures and shorter tenures.
In July 2025, Forbes reported that 1,358 CEOs around the globe had left their job since the start of the year – “more than the entirety of 2022.” According to Russell Reynolds Associates, “The average tenure for outgoing CEOs fell to 6.8 years in the first half of 2025, down from 7.7 years during the same period in 2024—the lowest H1 figure since we began tracking CEO turnover in 2018.”
Changing Times: The Reasons for Today’s Increased Turnovers
The rate at which CEOs choose to depart their current position or are asked to step down is rising at an incredible rate due to a multitude of factors. “CEO tenures are shortening as organisations confront mounting complexity, shifting stakeholder demands, and accelerated cycles of disruption,” says Yvonne Pengue, Director at executive search firm spot on minds Ltd.
Today’s CEOs are operating in a vastly more demanding environment than their predecessors. With average CEO tenure now significantly shorter than in previous decades, leaders are under pressure to make an impact far more quickly, often within just a few years of taking the role. At the same time, they are navigating an increasingly complex mix of challenges, from geopolitical instability and cybersecurity threats to AI-related ethical questions, talent shortages, public scrutiny, and unrelenting financial expectations. Together, these forces have fundamentally reshaped the CEO role, compressing the timeline for results while expanding the scope of leadership responsibility.
Ralica Yancheva, Senior Partner for IT & Digital at Norecu Executive Search GmbH, frequently works with boards facing complex CEO transitions in volatile market environments. Yancheva credits the increased turnover to unrealistic demands of the role.
“In today’s volatile environment, expectations placed on CEOs have increased significantly, particularly in markets like Germany, where companies are simultaneously navigating recession, transformation of business models, digitalization, and demographic shifts,” says Yancheva. “Boards often seek CEOs who can ‘walk on water,’ expected to fix long-standing issues that were neglected for years. This creates unrealistic demands and a high risk of failure.”
Edgility Search Founder and Chief Executive Officer Christina Greenberg attributes some of the shift to the pandemic and its after-affects. She explains that from 2020 into part of 2022, many boards and selection committees hired CEOs via virtual interactions rather than the typical in-depth, in-person engagements they held with candidates prior to the pandemic. This may have “limited their ability to establish strong, enduring connections and to reach a deeper level of understanding with one another from the beginning. Also, as everyone’s lives were upended, leaders sometimes found themselves making job and life decisions that made sense at the time, but after living with them for a while, felt untenable and so they decided they needed to make a quicker change.”
Ripple Effect: The Repercussions of Fast Turnovers
Despite the reasons behind shorter tenues, when a CEO leaves, it’s a shock to their organizations.
“CEO turnover is not only accelerating – it’s leaving a wider blast radius. The impact of unplanned exits is more volatile, more visible, and more existential,” says executive search firm Watson Board Advisors.
Because the CEO is inseparable from a company’s strategy, performance and culture increased turnover can destabilize a company with decreased investor and employee confidence, increased financial costs, loss of institutional knowledge, culture fragmentation, and more.
One of the largest effects of CEO turnover is the high financial cost. According to TRANSEARCH, the cost of losing and replacing a CEO “can translate to as much as 213% of a c-suite level employees’ salary.” The overall economic cost can reach more than $100 billion at global companies, reports Spencer Stuart. To mitigate disruption and financial fallout, organizations must place higher emphasis on CEO succession planning.
Succession Planning as Strategy
Too often, boards and selection committees postpone CEO succession until the current CEO leaves or is pushed out. To mitigate the chaos of CEO turnover, organizations must shift their thinking toward succession as a core business strategy.
“Boards are rethinking succession, not as a one-time decision, but as a continuous, strategic discipline,” Pengue concurs. “Leadership pipelines must evolve from static lists into adaptive ecosystems that track readiness, learning agility, and contextual fit.”
Greenberg has seen first-hand an increased level of interest in succession planning and transition support from organizations. “Some CEOs and board members have even contacted us 18-24 months before they are announcing a transition to start to think through their options.”
Proactive Succession Planning Lessons Learned
As organizations around the globe tackle high CEO turnover, several new priorities and lessons have emerged:
1. Make succession a full-board priority.
Watson Board Advisors recommends that boards elevate CEO succession “into the governance calendar with deliberate scenario testing and emergency preparedness. At the center: a clear, forward-looking CEO Success Profile, focused on what will differentiate and accelerate a future leader, and what might derail them.”
2. Ensure alignment and organizational integration.
Norecu Executive Search Managing Partner Marlind Scharpf, who advises extensively in the public sector and has deep experience with planned successions and long-term leadership continuity, explains “Even at the C-level, leadership should not operate in a feedback vacuum. Whether contracts are fixed or open-ended, regular, structured check-ins between shareholders and executives are essential to align expectations and foster development.”
3. Involve the outgoing CEO.
Scharpf advises organizations actively involve the outgoing CEO – “not as the decision-maker for their successor, but as a source of valuable context regarding the organization’s current challenges and the shareholder relationship. Respect for their contribution and structured knowledge transfer are key.”
4. Expand the successor slate and strategic optionality.
Watson Board Advisors suggests: “Go beyond the 1-2 ‘obvious’ candidates. Map a dynamic pipeline – internal and external – to see the full chessboard of moves and implications. Assess and develop the full executive bench so the organization is ready and resilient for range of scenarios.”
5. Implement phased onboarding and/or interim roles.
Several consultants noted the importance of giving new CEOs a more substantial onboarding period, often extending well beyond the first 90 days and, in some cases, through the first year. Some also pointed to interim leadership as a valuable bridge during transition periods, creating space for a more deliberate handoff, helping maintain momentum on critical priorities, and providing added support for first-time CEOs stepping into unfamiliar terrain.
“Interim leadership, once seen as a stopgap, is increasingly used as a strategic lever to enable recalibration, deepen stakeholder engagement, and support cultural realignment,” says Pengue. Yancheva provides an example of how Norecu Executive Search has recently used phased onboarding: “In one recent case, we created an interim leadership role, giving the incoming CEO 6–12 months to understand the business before formally taking over.”
6. Stress-test readiness of leadership and the board.
Organizations should take a forward-looking approach not only to external candidates, but also to the development of internal talent. Doing so allows potential successors to be identified well before a transition becomes urgent and gives them meaningful opportunities to build the leadership capabilities needed for broader responsibility. Over time, this strengthens both individual performance and the organization’s overall resilience.
Watson Board Advisors recommends organizations “use stretch roles, structured coaching, and robust assessment to develop executives readiness and agility under pressure. For the board, use scenarios and table-tops to refine the playbook and skills that accelerate decisions in volatile conditions.”
7. Use robust leadership diagnostics.
Every consultant stressed that robust leadership diagnostics and assessments are critical to ensuring candidates not only meet technical criteria but also align in personality, values, cultural fit, and leadership potential.
Spot on minds says “The most forward-looking boards now expect incoming CEOs to articulate not only their track record, but a concrete, actionable growth thesis rooted in the organisation’s specific context. This shift is reshaping how candidates are assessed: not just on operational competence, but on their ability to interpret the present and define a credible path to long-term value creation.”
A Path Forward: Navigating the Tenure of the Modern CEO
As organizations around the world continue to navigate the evolving demands of the modern CEO role, they must also rethink how they approach leadership transitions and succession planning. When succession is treated as a continuous governance priority rather than a reactive response, it can become not just a safeguard against disruption, but a catalyst for organizational renewal and sustained performance.
“The boards that outperform in succession are the ones that lean into tension, challenge assumptions, and make leadership a shared, strategic act,” adds Watson Board Advisors.
