I’m puzzled by the mess that is GE. The Company recently removed former CEO John Flannery after only 14 months at the helm only to replace him with a Board member (Larry Culp). I was a fan of Flannery’s effort to decentralize operations and to divest non-strategic businesses. However, I did not agree with all of his choices. Perhaps GE’s Board did not either. It is clear that the Board and Flannery did not operate in lockstep. Therefore, it would seem that GE’s Board performed little due diligence prior to promoting Flannery to CEO. Here are a few thoughts for corporate boards to contemplate prior to hiring a CEO.

1.) Executive Recruiters are there to get a deal done. Executive recruiters exist to get paid. Too often recruiters rush to fill vacant CEO posts with acceptable candidates in order to quickly realize their fees. The proper approach is to invest the time required to ensure CEO candidate fit. To this point, I’ve yet to see an executive recruiter publish statistics about median CEO tenure for assignments they’ve filled.

2.) Corporate Boards ought to adopt a more data-driven approach to ensuring CEO fit.

a.) Relationships are only the tip of the spear. Relationships are great to leverage when initially casting a wide net to identify CEO candidates. However, that is only the beginning of the process. Simply because “Person A” knows “Person B” does not qualify Person B for the CEO job. Consider GE for example. Flannery was hired by the company in 1987 and held a number of senior posts before becoming CEO in August 2017. I assume plenty of people knew him at a superficial level, but did anyone at the Board level “know” him at a substantive level?

b.) Candidate due diligence is often overlooked or an afterthought. Due diligence consists of more than talking with a few people and conducting a background check.

c.) Collect candidate data that matters. In the case of GE – why didn’t the Board ask Flannery to submit a plan for fixing GE as part of the recruiting/ diligence process? Instead, the company promoted Flannery to CEO where he then embarked on a 100-day tour to inform his grand strategy for repairing GE. This should have been part of diligence. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 until you show me something as a Board member that I can hang my hat on.