5 Red Flags You’ve Been Set Up to Fail
Underfunding, no real authority, vague goals: Managers can walk into traps with no hope of success. How to spot them.
Being a good leader is tough under most circumstances. Very few people have a natural talent for it, and only about 40% who become managers get any formal training for it. That’s on top of all of the challenging problems leaders are tasked with solving, such as raising profits, motivating employees, and changing corporate cultures. Decades of study say that there’s only about a one-in-three chance that big projects meet all of their success targets.
But sometimes a critical mass of obstacles—put there unconsciously or deliberately by others—can make success nearly impossible. Forget doing more with less; at times, leaders seemingly must do everything without any support at all. At other times, they must reckon with vague goals, or intractable institutional problems, or colleagues who can’t work well together. In many instances, leaders are simply set up to fail. “There can be so many red flags,” says Cheryl D’Cruz-Young, a Korn Ferry senior client partner in the firm’s Global Energy practice.
Even if failure seems inevitable, don’t just resign yourself to the situation, says Kevin Cashman, Korn Ferry’s vice chairman of CEO and enterprise leadership. “Learn everywhere,” he says.
Here are five red flags that could suggest a leader has been set up to fail.
The “ghost” budget
Almost every manager complains that they don’t have enough resources, but occasionally it’s true, and the results can be disastrous. For example, a leader might be given a high-priority mandate—such as a digital transformation or a market expansion—while the departmental budget remains flat or is partially diverted to another function. About 13% of projects, no matter their size, fail outright, according to a 2025 survey of nearly 6,000 managers worldwide by the Project Management Institute. But projects that were significantly underfunded had a failure rate of 75%.
The best way to handle so-called ghost budgets is to avoid them in the first place, says Michael Franzino, president of Korn Ferry’s Global Financial Services practice. If you suspect that an upcoming project might be underfunded, request a formal resource-to-objective audit. If the project is already underway, present a breakdown of the resources required—whether money, time, people, technology, or some combination thereof—versus what is currently allocated. If the gap isn’t closed, document the projected shortfall in a quarterly risk report to your bosses.
The trap of vague goals
The CEO tapped the vice president on the shoulder and said, “Fix it.” But what does that mean? Higher profits? Lower employee turnover? Something else? Having soft or vague goals essentially creates moving targets that can be impossible to achieve. Leaders need to hold themselves accountable for everything that happens (including what fails to happen), but they need to have their responsibility and responsibilities clearly outlined, Franzino says.
Make sure bosses are on the same page, goal wise, as well. Send a summary email after every planning session, and use direct language—for instance, “To confirm our alignment, my success will be measured this quarter exclusively by (X metric) and (Y metric). Please let me know if this has changed.”
All the accountability, but none of the authority
Numerous companies have blown up their organizational charts over the last three years, eliminating layers of management in an effort to become more productive. That’s a noble goal, but the flattening of these structures can make it difficult to determine who reports to whom about what. Leaders can be dropped into a situation where no one is pulling in the same direction. The problem gets exacerbated as teams get bigger. “Ambiguity is going to happen,” D’Cruz-Young says.
Experts suggest developing a RACI report, a project management tool that maps out tasks, milestones, or key decisions against the team roles responsible for them. Importantly, it clarifies roles—who is responsible, who is accountable, who needs to be consulted before decisions are made, and who needs to be informed of decisions—to prevent bottlenecks, confusion, and duplicate efforts. The overall leader also needs assurances from their own bosses about their authority. “You need a firm commitment that people can’t go around you and go to ‘Dad,’” Franzino says.
The last person to know
It’s a big red flag when a manager is consistently the last person to know about major shifts in company strategy, or if they’re excluded from senior leadership’s “meeting before the meeting,” where real decisions are made.
If leaders find themselves in this situation, they need to work on their own organizational awareness. This emotional-intelligence skill is the ability of a leader to position themselves in the middle of networks—formal or otherwise—so they’re connected into what’s going on and can learn how things work (or don’t work). Leaders with high organizational awareness will be able to wield far more influence, and usually won’t find themselves blindsided by corporate swings.
The “Glass Cliff” appointment
Congratulations, you’ve been promoted into a corporate war zone—a department that has been failing for years and is rife with people who can’t stand working together. You’re expected to turn it around immediately. Oh, and the market conditions are awful.
Psychologists Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam coined the term "Glass Cliff" to describe how some leaders (statistically, women and minorities) are more likely to be appointed to leadership roles during periods of crisis. Their research found that female CEOs were 27% more likely to be appointed during downturns than their male counterparts, essentially placing them in positions where a high risk of failure was baked into the environment.
Experts suggest negotiating a “stabilization window,” a period of several months during which the leader can identify major problems and set up a plan for solving them. During this time period, traditional hard metrics will be suspended in favor of broad milestones. Get this commitment in writing.
For more career advice, read Korn Ferry CEO Gary Burnison's latest book, I Need a Job!
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