# What to do when the New Executive Ruins the Vibe?

> Is your new executive killing the culture? Learn how to fix a "vibe shift" before your best employees start quitting.

- **Author:** Robin Keyen
- **Category:** tmgXwfBTmoDvzx4s5EcX
- **Published:** 2026-04-01
- **Language:** en

## The 'experienced' VP you hired is treating your startup like a slow-moving corporation.
You needed someone who could handle the complexity you were growing into. Someone who'd "been there before." So you hired a seasoned VP from a well-known company — great CV, confident in the interview, strong references.
Three months later, your best engineers are complaining about approval layers that didn't exist before. Your head of marketing is in her fourth strategy meeting this week and hasn't shipped anything. And the energy in the office — that weird, hard-to-name thing that made people stay late because they wanted to — is quietly draining out.
This is one of the most common and most painful problems in startup growth. It doesn't show up in the financials right away. It shows up first in Slack tone, in the eyes of your long-tenured people, in how many tabs are open on LinkedIn.
By the time it hits the numbers, you've already lost some of your best people.
## Why this keeps happening
Hiring an experienced executive feels like the responsible move. And it often is — just not always in the way founders expect.
The executive in question usually isn't a bad person. They're not intentionally making things worse. They're doing exactly what made them successful before: building structure, managing risk, creating process. The problem is that the environment they built those habits in was completely different from yours.
A large corporate system rewards predictability. Documentation, sign-offs, quarterly reviews, cross-functional alignment — these are features in that environment. They exist because a €500M organisation genuinely needs them to function.
But in a 40-person company still figuring out product-market fit, the same behaviours are bugs. They slow decisions, frustrate people who are used to moving fast, and signal — loudly — that the culture is shifting toward caution.
 ⚠️ Warning: The most dangerous version of this problem isn't a VP who's openly difficult. It's one who is professionally competent, well-meaning, and systematically building a company you don't want.
## The failure rate nobody talks about loudly enough
Executive hiring is treated like a solved problem. It isn't.
Across multiple studies — including research from Gartner, HBR, and the University of South Carolina's Center for Executive Succession — 40% or more of externally hired executives fail within 18 months. Not "underperform slightly." Fail. Departed, pushed out, or quietly sidelined.
Hogan Assessments, which has studied leadership derailment for decades, puts the base rate of managerial failure even higher — at a median of 50% across seniority levels. Half.
Avenue Leadership Consulting found that 27–46% of executive transitions are labelled "failures or disappointments" at the two-year mark — even in cases where no one is technically fired.
The reasons are almost never about skill. In the vast majority of cases, derailment comes down to four things: interpersonal problems, failure to meet business objectives, inability to build the team, and inability to adapt. Three of those four are culture and fit problems. (Source: Hogan Assessments)
## What "ruins the vibe" actually looks like
Here's what this problem looks like in practice — not the dramatic version, the real one.
### Decision velocity drops. 
Things that used to get decided in a Slack thread now need a meeting. Things that needed one meeting now need three. Nobody has officially changed the process. The new executive just... operates that way.
### Documentation creep. 
Suddenly there are templates for things that didn't need templates. Briefs before briefs. Retrospectives on the retrospectives. People spend time building the scaffolding of work instead of doing the work.
### Energy leaves the room. 
Your early team had a shared understanding of how things got done. The new VP doesn't share it — and doesn't seem to realise that it exists. People start to feel like strangers in their own company.
### Your best people start questioning their future there. 
Not loudly. They won't complain to you directly. They start taking the recruiter calls they used to ignore.
 💡 Quick tip: The people most likely to leave first are your highest performers — the ones with the most options and the least tolerance for friction that doesn't serve them. If you're seeing unusual activity from your core team, don't wait for an exit interview to understand why.
## The science of executive derailment
Robert Hogan's research is probably the most rigorous body of work on why leaders fail. His conclusion is counterintuitive: the behaviours that derail executives are often the same strengths that got them promoted.
A VP who succeeded in a large company by being meticulous and thorough can become an insufferable bottleneck in a startup. An executive who rose by being strategically cautious can paralyse a team that needs to move.
Early-career strengths harden into liabilities. They were never retrained because they always worked — until they don't.
 ✅ Best practice: When evaluating executive candidates, don't only ask "what did you succeed at." Ask specifically: "Tell me about a time you failed to read a culture or team correctly. What happened, and what did you learn?" The quality of that answer tells you more than the success stories.
## Founder Mode: what happened when Airbnb tried it the other way
In September 2024, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham published an essay that became the most shared piece of startup writing in years. It was called Founder Mode — and it was based directly on a talk by Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky.
The core observation: founders are consistently told to "hire great people and give them room." Graham's argument is that this advice fails constantly. When Chesky tried it — stepping back, trusting his senior leadership, running Airbnb like a "professional manager" — the company nearly imploded.
Only when he returned to direct, hands-on involvement (studying how Steve Jobs ran Apple) did things stabilise. Airbnb recovered. It went public. Chesky attributes that recovery partly to rejecting the conventional executive management model.
Graham's broader point is that founders who've been told their instinct to stay close to everything is a failure of leadership have been given bad advice. The "hire and delegate" model works in mature businesses. In startups, it often introduces exactly the kind of cultural drag your company can't afford.
Following the essay, Harvard Business Review studied 50 founder CEOs versus 58 non-founder CEOs across more than 1,400 data points. The differences in how they operated were stark: founders showed divergent thinking, intrinsic motivation, and tighter, more loyal inner circles. Corporate executives brought in as founders' successors often had none of these qualities — and struggled to replicate the conditions that made the company worth leading.
 💡 Quick tip: If you're a founder hiring a first VP-level person, ask yourself: "Am I hiring someone who will accelerate how we already operate, or someone who will try to change how we operate?" Both can be the right answer. But you need to know which one you need — before you hire.
## SaaStr's red flags: what practitioners actually see
Jason Lemkin has seen hundreds of VP hires fail and succeed across the SaaStr community of SaaS founders. His list of early warning signs is as useful as anything in academic research — because it's grounded in pattern recognition, not theory.
The #1 sign a VP won't work out: they've stopped doing the actual work. They've shifted entirely into strategy mode. They're in every meeting but not shipping anything. They're managing up to you and down to their team but not contributing anything direct.
Other practitioner red flags:
- They can't meet simple deadlines in their first 60 days

- They seem threatened by other strong hires rather than energised by them

- They don't connect to the company's mission — it's a job, not a cause

- They bring people from their previous company without the permission or cultural consideration to do so


 ⚠️ Warning: Jason Lemkin's observation from SaaStr: "Keeping a VP on for more than a few months when it just isn't going to work is tougher — because the damage compounds." The longer you wait after you've spotted the problem, the more expensive the fix becomes. Source: SaaStr
## The real cost — and why it's higher in Belgium
A failed executive hire isn't just an embarrassment. It's a financial event.
SHRM estimates the cost of replacing a failed executive at 200–400% of annual salary. Gartner and HBR push that to 10–15x when you factor in strategic drag, team attrition, and the cost of rehiring. The working number most HR practitioners use: 3–5x annual compensation.
For a VP earning €100,000 per year in Belgium, that's a minimum of €300,000 in direct and indirect costs — and that's before accounting for the teammates who quit in the fallout.
Belgian context matters here. Belgian employment law doesn't operate like at-will employment in the US or the UK. Dismissing an executive for poor cultural fit — without dringende reden (serious cause) — triggers formal notice periods that can run to several months at this seniority level. The employer-side social security contributions that apply in Belgium mean the total cost of separation is substantially higher than in comparable European markets.
This isn't a reason not to act. It's a reason to act faster when you see the signs — and to qualify candidates more rigorously before signing.
## How to catch it in the first 90 days
The 90-day window is your most important diagnostic period. What you observe in this window is highly predictive of what the next two years will look like.
Watch for:
- How they give feedback. Does it land with the team as coaching, or as criticism?

- How they handle ambiguity. Do they build a process to manage it, or do they sit with it long enough to understand it first?

- Whether they ask questions or make statements. Senior executives who arrive with all the answers rarely survive contact with a culture they don't yet understand.

- How the people around them feel. Not what they tell you — what you observe when they're in the room together.


 ✅ Best practice: At 30, 60, and 90 days, have a brief informal conversation with 2–3 people who work directly with the new executive. Don't ask "how's it going." Ask: "What's one thing they've done that's made your job easier? What's one thing that's added friction?" The gap between those two answers is your signal.
## What to do when you've already hired the wrong person
This is the part most leadership content skips. You're already in it. Now what?
### Name the problem specifically. 
"Culture fit issues" is too vague to act on. Get specific: are they slowing decisions? Are they managing up rather than building down? Is the team disengaging? The specific problem determines the specific response.
### Have the direct conversation first. 
Before you decide it's unfixable, have an explicit conversation with the executive about what you're observing. Many executive mismatches are partially fixable — not because the person is bad, but because no one ever told them clearly what the role actually required.
### Set a clear 60-day improvement bar. 
If the conversation happens and things don't shift in a defined window, you have your answer. The failure to change course after honest feedback is the real data point.
### Don't let "expensive to fix" become a reason to delay. 
The longer you carry a senior executive who's draining the culture, the more of your best people you lose. Those losses are harder to recover from than the separation cost itself.
## Hiring differently next time
The research on executive derailment is consistent enough to act on. Here's what it says about prevention:
### Hire for cultural adaptability, not just cultural fit. 
A candidate who fits your current culture perfectly may not fit the culture you'll need in 18 months. Ask how they've adapted to different environments before.
### Check references on culture, not competence. 
Most references confirm competence because that's what we ask about. Ask instead: "Describe their leadership style when things were uncertain or moving fast." The answers diverge quickly.
### Look for evidence of self-awareness about their own failure modes. 
The best executives can tell you specifically where they've been wrong, not just where they've been right.
### Pay attention to how they engage with your current team in the interview process. 
A candidate who dismisses or subtly condescends to your existing team in conversations is showing you something real.
As the market for senior talent continues to become more transparent — with platforms like Joobs surfacing employer reputation signals and role context alongside candidate profiles — candidates are doing similar due diligence on culture before they accept. The same visibility works in your favour: cultural mismatches are easier to surface before they cost you.
## Belgian and EU legal angle
A few things worth knowing if you're navigating this in Belgium specifically.
### Notice periods at senior level are significant. 
Belgian law calculates notice based on seniority and remuneration under the Wet betreffende de arbeidsovereenkomsten. For a VP with 3+ years of tenure, notice obligations can run to several months. This makes early action — ideally in the probationary period — much less costly than delayed action.
### Dringende reden (serious cause dismissal) 
allows for immediate dismissal without notice, but the legal threshold is high and requires written notification within three working days of the triggering event. Cultural mismatch and performance issues that develop gradually don't typically meet this threshold.
### GDPR considerations 
apply if you're collecting reference check data or background information during a post-hire assessment. The Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit (Belgian DPA) has been active in enforcement: ensure any data collected in an exit or performance process is handled with appropriate consent and proportionality.
 💡 Quick tip: If you're in Belgium and you're approaching a difficult executive exit, consult an employment law specialist before you start the formal conversation. The sequence of steps matters. A misstep in the process can convert a manageable exit into a contested one.
## FAQ
How do I tell the difference between an executive who needs more time and one who just isn't right?The clearest signal is whether they're self-aware and adaptable. Give direct, specific feedback — then observe whether they adjust. An executive who isn't right typically either doesn't change, or changes their behaviour in the room with you and reverts when you're not watching.
My new VP is good at their function but bad for the culture. Do I keep them?Rarely works long term. Functional excellence in a senior leader who damages culture typically produces a team that delivers results on paper while slowly losing its best people. The cost of that turnover usually exceeds whatever the executive produces.
Should I have given this person a different brief before they started?Probably yes — and it's worth doing even mid-flight. Specific, written expectations about culture and operating style are almost never given to executives. Most receive a functional brief and are left to figure out the cultural one themselves.
Is it fair to judge someone on culture fit this quickly? Fair or not, culture read happens fast on both sides. Your existing team are forming their opinion in the first 30 days. The executive is forming their opinion of you too. The question isn't whether to make a judgement — it's whether to make it consciously.
How do I protect the team if I decide to part ways?Be honest with the team without being disparaging. "We've made a change at leadership level" is enough. Don't over-explain. Give the team the stability signal — leadership is stable, the direction is clear — and move quickly to fill the gap.

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*Source: [Joobs.be](https://joobs.be/en/blog/what-to-do-when-the-new-executive-ruins-the-vibe)*