Leadership
Cleaning House: How Far Does It Go?
Amid high CEO turnover, boards are dealing with new chief executives who want to replace their entire exec teams. Is that a good idea?
September 15, 2025
What To Do When the New CEO Wants a Totally Different Team
The board of the healthcare company was finally getting a breather. After a grueling search for a new CEO, their top choice had accepted the offer and was in her second month on the job. Things seemed to be going fairly smoothly—until she told the board chair she wanted a whole new C-suite, and fast.
It’s not uncommon for new CEOs to evaluate and restructure the senior leadership team. After all, studies show aligned leadership teams generate more revenue, and a recent Korn Ferry CEO and board survey showed only 10% of respondents are “extremely confident” in their C-suite’s ability to thrive in the next three years. There’s no doubt that CEOs are reexamining their ranks to figure out who’s able to operate in an uncertain and volatile environment.
But at a time when newly appointed CEOs are given less time to prove themselves and turnover for their role remains near all-time highs, the extent to which some leaders are cleaning house has morphed. “Given all the changes in the world, companies aren’t just thinking about whether the next CEO is fit for purpose,” says Claudia Pici Morris, co-lead of Korn Ferry’s Board Succession practice. “They also need to be thinking about whether the top team has the right mindset to transform and be agile.” One issue: CEOs who clean house may wind up with a team that is so loyal to them that the board can’t get a clear picture of the company’s progress.
To ensure a culture change or strategic shift in an era of private-equity acquisitions and company turnarounds, CEOs often replace their entire leadership team within their first 12 to 18 months in the job. The most vulnerable position is typically that of the CFO—not for reasons of performance, but because a new CEO often wants to bring in someone who they’ve worked with before and have built solid trust with, says Joe Griesedieck, vice chairman at Korn Ferry.
But experts say it’s not wise to replace everyone at once. “Unless something’s going on where the company is obviously in trouble, it’s precipitous to clean house because you don’t really know what you have,” Griesedieck says. CEOs should take six to 12 months to assess which critical key roles may need to be replaced. “You have to be strategic about which roles are most critical to drive change,” Morris says. “Sometimes it’s not someone in a P&L position, but rather a role that can bring more innovation to the company.”
One of the biggest missteps new CEOs make is to not retain leaders who understand the company’s culture. Entirely new teams can fail to grasp a company’s identity. “The board can often help with institutional knowledge, but they may not have as much insight into culture as top management,” Griesedieck says.
To that end, it’s important for the board to keep tabs on new leadership changes: Are they disrupting organizational productivity more than usual? Are they potentially shaking stakeholder confidence? “Continuity is incredibly important when transitions happen,” says Jane Edison Stevenson, global vice chair of Korn Ferry’s Board and CEO Services practice. “It’s critical for new CEOs to engage with multiple audiences and communicate effectively about what’s going on, and why.”
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