50 to 70% of executives fail within 18 months of taking on a new role, whether they are external hires or internal promotions. That failure rate destroys an estimated $1 trillion in value annually across the S&P 1500. Even more sobering, only 4% of leaders score in the top quartile of leadership effectiveness. Mediocrity has become the norm. And yet, organizations spend $10B+ on executive search and $60B+ on leadership development programs every year, with very little to show for it.
Clearly, something is broken in how we select, assess, and develop leaders.
What’s Wrong With Leadership Assessment Today
Traditional approaches rely heavily on human judgment, with recruiters, coaches, boards, and hiring managers making calls based on imperfect information and gut instinct. These methods are:
Fragmented: multiple tools and interviews with no unified model.
Slow and costly: taking weeks or months, at $15K to $25K per executive.
Biased and inconsistent: over reliant on instincts, vulnerable to personal bias.
Static: producing long, jargon heavy reports that sit on shelves.
The result is mis-hires, failed promotions, high turnover, and missed opportunities to grow internal talent.
The Turning Point: Data and AI Are Changing the Game
The good news is that we no longer have to guess.
Behavioral Data Is Abundant
Validated tools like Hogan, Burke, and Clifton now allow us to scientifically measure hundreds of leadership attributes, from drive and energy to risk tolerance, collaboration, and strategic thinking. This data provides a multidimensional view of a leader’s potential, strengths, and derailers.
Predictive Analytics Provide Answers
Instead of treating assessment as a one off snapshot, we can now link behavioral data to business outcomes such as revenue growth, retention, and time to value. We can build role specific Ideal Leader Profiles that let us benchmark candidates, internal successors, or entire leadership teams against what great looks like for your company and context.
Generative AI Brings the Data to Life
The biggest breakthrough is conversational interfaces. Leaders no longer have to wade through static 40 page reports. With generative AI, they can simply ask:
“What are my top strengths and risks?”
“Who on my team is ready for promotion?”
“What’s my succession risk in critical roles?”
And get instant, contextual, data driven answers that support faster, better decisions.
The Opportunity Ahead
This is not just an upgrade, it is a transformation of how we think about leadership:
From slow to fast: hours instead of months, enabling decision velocity.
From gut to evidence: 95% reliability and auditable outcomes.
From exclusive to scalable: high quality insights for every level of leadership, not just the C suite.
Leadership risk is no longer something to manage by intuition. With behavioral data, predictive analytics, and generative AI, we can finally make leadership decisions that are evidence based, repeatable, and tied to results. In the next article of this series, we will explore why traditional assessment fails and what a modern AI enabled solution looks like.