Fit Happens: Why CEOs and Leaders Succeed or Fail

Jason Baumgarten
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Management

Why do talented leaders fail in one role and thrive in the next? Jason Baumgarten has led hundreds of Board, CEO and c-suite transitions at Spencer Stuart. He covers CEO succession, how boards hire a CEO, and shares leadership research alongside candid opinions about leadership and governance. His guests include CEOs, Board Directors, Researchers, Authors and unique executives who share their own observations about leadership but also their own lessons and life stories. Jason covers everything from the impact of technology and AI on leaders to the personal toll and stress of leadership. Every episode brings new lessons, fresh perspectives and a glimpse into a leader’s story.

  1. 6d ago

    Founder, Investor, Activist, Emmy Winner: Dave Lu

    Dave Lu built a career by walking away from the ladder everyone told him to climb, and it taught him more about leadership fit than any resume ever could. In this conversation I sit down with Dave Lu, founder of Hyphen Capital, co founder of Fanpop, and the organizer behind the Enough open letter that ran as a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal. Dave is also an Emmy winning producer. We talk about growing up as one of the only Asian kids in his New Jersey school, the scarcity mindset that drove him toward a "safe" career at Yahoo and beyond, and the moment he realized that starting his own company was actually an option. Dave gets specific about what separates real conviction from a founder who just needed an idea after a layoff, why he thinks most venture capital success comes down to access rather than skill, and how he tells the difference between a workhorse and a true racehorse when he is deciding where to invest. We also get into the story behind the Enough ad, what it meant for Asian American founders to be recognized publicly, and why he thinks authentic leadership gets oversimplified in both directions. This episode is a useful one for anyone thinking about CEO succession, executive fit, or what actually predicts whether a founder or executive will perform once the spotlight moves past the resume. Key takeaways: Growing up as "the other" taught Dave to stand up for himself, and a public moment involving his father reshaped how he thinks about speaking up versus staying quietThe scarcity mindset from immigrant parents can quietly dictate career choices long after those parents stop being the ones making the demandsSeeing Jerry Yang run Yahoo was Dave's "see it to be it" moment that planted the idea that founding a company was possible for someone like himDave argues most venture capital success is about access and relationships, not superior picking skill, which matters for anyone evaluating executive fit or CEO search decisionsThe difference between a "workhorse" and a "racehorse" shows up in what someone actually built or launched, not just where they workedThe Enough open letter in the Wall Street Journal became a rallying point during a wave of anti Asian violence, drawing signatures from CEOs, directors, and public figuresDave pushes back on the idea that authentic leadership means total transparency at all times, arguing for discretion about what a team actually needs to hearHe sees empathy as a leadership strength rather than a weakness, with real cost implications for turnover and loyaltyHis advice to founders and executives alike: build your own house instead of trying to break someone else's ceiling FitHappens is hosted by Jason Baumgarten, Former Head of the Global CEO and Board Practice at Spencer Stuart. The show covers CEO succession, hiring a CEO, board of directors dynamics and governance and leadership fit and performance. New episodes every week at fithappens.fm. Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaumgarten/Email the show here: jason@fithappens.fm 00:00 Dave Lu's background and today's question00:31 Dave's first paid jobs00:58 Growing up as the other in New Jersey02:45 The mall story with his dad04:30 Scarcity mindset and the family career script08:13 The Super Mario Brothers career ladder09:31 Seeing Jerry Yang and the see it to be it moment11:28 Starting Fanpop and identity beyond work15:09 Building community through founder dinners19:25 Launching Hyphen and the first check21:06 What Dave actually underwrites in founders23:05 Luck, access, and picking founders25:03 The Enough open letter story33:28 Forgiveness versus permission35:53 Why deference does not translate to the West39:23 Authentic leadership versus performative authenticity44:44 Workhorse versus racehorse46:12 Speed round begins49:15 Leadership advice Dave thinks is bad52:16 Closing thoughts

    Founder, Investor, Activist, Emmy Winner: Dave Lu

  2. Oct 22

    Why Boards Screen Out the Wrong Kind of Risk

    Does a leader's public failure actually tell you less than their quiet success? Here's a scenario I run into constantly in executive search: two final candidates for a CEO role, one with a spotless record, one with a very public failure in their past. The easy move is to screen out the second person. I think that instinct deserves a lot more scrutiny than it usually gets, and this episode is my attempt to work through why. Drawing on research across sectors, including studies on founder performance, star analysts who change employers, and the real effectiveness of after action debriefs, I unpack why some people genuinely learn from failure and others just become defensive, or recover and repeat the same mistake. I walk through the case of Ron Johnson's move from Apple to JC Penney as a fit question rather than a simple failure story, and I lay out a three part framework for separating an examined failure from an unexamined one: an accurate account of what happened, deliberate work to understand it, and a change in behavior that other people can actually confirm. This matters directly to CEO recruitment and to how boards approach hiring a CEO. It also matters to anyone evaluating their own career after something didn't go to plan. I talk about the asymmetry in incentives that pushes search professionals and boards toward the safer, more conventional record, and why that asymmetry can cause us to overlook real executive fit. I also touch on fairness, including research showing CEO dismissals differ by gender, and where the line sits between a good faith error and genuine misconduct. Key takeaways: Failure is not one thing. A recession, a bad acquisition, a boardroom disagreement and concealment of results all get labeled failure, but they reveal completely different things about a leader's judgment.Success deserves the same scrutiny as failure. Ask what a leader actually contributed versus what they inherited from the team, market, or momentum.Properly conducted debriefs improve effectiveness by roughly 20 to 25 percent, which is strong evidence that structured review, not failure itself, drives learning.Previously failed founders perform more like first time founders than like founders with a prior success, a reminder that failure alone is not an advantage.Examined failure requires three things: an accurate account of events, deliberate work to understand your part in it, and a confirmed change in behavior.Ron Johnson's move from Apple to JC Penney illustrates how leadership fit depends on whether a leader's prior conditions can actually be recreated in a new setting.Self reported growth after a setback correlates poorly with measured change, so look for evidence from others, not just a good story.CEO dismissals and broader leadership dismissals differ by gender, which means the same event can get interpreted differently depending on who it happened to. Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaumgarten/Email the show here: jason@fithappens.fm FitHappens is hosted by Jason Baumgarten, Former Head of the Global CEO and Board Practice at Spencer Stuart. The show covers CEO succession, hiring a CEO, board of directors dynamics and governance and leadership fit and performance. New episodes every week at fithappens.fm. 00:00 Two final candidates for CEO02:16 Does hardship really make you better02:56 Why the word failure does too much work04:22 Industry performance and CEO departure05:46 The incentive to pick the safer record06:33 What we owe the successful candidate too07:19 Founders who failed before and what changed08:13 Why debriefs improve effectiveness 20 to 25 percent11:05 Ron Johnson, Apple and JC Penney12:32 Star analysts who changed firms14:33 Examined failure versus examined success15:42 Building a credible account from a hypothetical candidate19:05 Why some polished stories shouldn't win trust19:31 Growth after trauma and the evidence gap20:01 Gender differences in leadership dismissal21:14 What the Army's after action report teaches us22:22 An exercise for your own career

    Why Boards Screen Out the Wrong Kind of Risk

  3. Oct 15

    Why 85 Percent of New CEOs Are First Timers, with Anand Eswaran

    What actually makes a leader fit a job, when the written job spec says one thing and the company needs another? That is the question at the center of my conversation with Anand Eswaran, CEO of Veeam Software, a 15 billion dollar company that exists to put data back together after ransomware attacks, outages, and some of the worst days a company ever has. Anand is a first time CEO who will tell you, bluntly, that he did not match the spec the board wrote for his own job. The posting called for a proven CEO with a product engineering pedigree and an industry veteran as backup. He was none of the three. We talk about why the board hired him anyway, and why that story connects to a much bigger pattern in executive fit and hiring a CEO: the research shows roughly 85 percent of newly appointed S&P 1500 CEOs are first timers, and there is very little statistical difference in performance between first time and repeat CEOs once you control for the momentum they inherit. We trace Anand's path from a childhood in Mumbai taking apart radios and the family's first computer, through grad school in Missouri, into a career that moved through consulting, services, sales, Microsoft Digital, running Microsoft's enterprise business, serving as COO of RingCentral, and finally to Veeam. He describes it as a series of nonlinear steps rather than a planned climb, and explains why that range matters more than a straight line when a board is thinking about leadership fit. We also get into what changed for him operationally once he became CEO: learning to delegate without abdicating, rewiring his relationship with speed, and what he calls firing the operator inside himself. He talks about culture as a concrete operating discipline rather than a soft idea, how services experience shapes retention and expansion in a SaaS business, and how he is using AI inside Veeam, from a bot paired with every seller to the deeper question of trusting the data a model is trained on. This is a conversation about how leadership coaching programs and boards alike should be thinking past the resume, toward the underlying qualities that actually predict whether someone can do the job in front of them. Key takeaways: Veeam's CEO spec called for a proven CEO with a product and engineering background. Anand had none of those three things, and was hired anyway because of how he leads, not his resume.Roughly 85 percent of newly appointed S&P 1500 CEOs are first time CEOs, and there is little statistical performance difference between first timers and repeat CEOs once you control for inherited momentum.A CEO accounts for an estimated 15 to 30 percent of firm performance, a smaller share at large companies and a larger share at small ones.Anand's biggest personal shift moving from Microsoft to Veeam was learning to delegate without abdicating and slowing his own bias for speed.Culture, in his view, is a specific operating discipline (zooming in and out, grounding decisions in data, building a system bigger than any one person) not a soft perk.Retention and expansion, not new customer acquisition, are now the real growth engine in software, and a services background builds exactly that muscle.AI's biggest impact is not making individual tasks faster, it is forcing companies to reimagine entire workflows, which is how Veeam cut its CAC payback from 30 months to roughly 12.The hardest unresolved question in AI right now is whether you can trust the data a model is trained on, which is the problem Veeam is built to solve.Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaumgarten/Email the show here: jason@fithappens.fm FitHappens is hosted by Jason Baumgarten, Former Head of the Global CEO and Board Practice at Spencer Stuart. The show covers CEO succession, hiring a CEO, board of directors dynamics and governance and leadership fit and performance. New episodes every week at fithappens.fm. Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaumgarten/Email the show here: jason@fithappens.fm Timestamps00:00 A kid in Mumbai taking apart radios01:01 Welcome Anand Eswaran to Fit Happens03:14 His first computer and Prince of Persia05:36 Moving from Mumbai to Missouri09:52 Was there a wrong turn in his career13:13 The Veeam CEO spec he did not match15:56 85 percent of new CEOs are first timers20:26 Why Veeam's success is a system not one person22:16 Firing the operator inside himself25:29 What a services background taught him29:05 How AI is changing his leadership33:50 Can you trust the data a model learns from

    Why 85 Percent of New CEOs Are First Timers, with Anand Eswaran

  4. Oct 8

    The Hidden Science Of Leadership Potential (And Why Most Companies Get It Wrong)

    Are you actually spotting leadership potential, or just rewarding polish and confidence? In this solo episode, I break down the most overused word in succession planning: potential. Every talent review, every nine box grid, every slate has it, and almost nobody defines it the same way. I walk through research on how companies actually measure potential (hint: it's mostly just past performance in disguise), and why that approach quietly filters out some of your best future leaders while promoting people who eventually derail. I get into the four components of learning agility, the strongest research backed predictor of leadership potential, and why it matters more than how someone performs at a job they already know how to do. I also share a personal story from early in my career about a candidate who nearly didn't get the job because he wasn't polished in the interview, and what a reference call taught me about how wrong my first impression was. This episode is for anyone involved in CEO coaching, executive coaching and leadership development, or succession planning, whether you sit on a board, run a talent review, or you're simply trying to understand your own leadership fit. I also give you a practical tool, the first time test, that you can use in your next interview or reference call to actually find the signal that matters. Key takeaways: Most organizations define potential as being impressive right now, which is backwards. Potential is supposed to predict something you haven't seen yet.Only 1 in 10 companies studied actually measured how someone handles ambiguity, even though ambiguity defines most senior roles.More than 40% of people on high potential lists often don't belong there, and the research shows this shows up across decades of leadership data.Learning agility, the strongest predictor of leadership potential, has four parts: mental agility, people agility, change agility, and results agility.People high in learning agility tend to underrate themselves, while people low in learning agility tend to overrate themselves, which skews interviews toward the wrong candidate.Leaders who greatly overstate their own abilities are six times more likely to be a derailment risk.Between 30 and 50 percent of high potential managers and executives eventually derail, and many leave involuntarily within five years.The first time test asks candidates and references about the first time someone did something they'd never done before, not how good their results were.Similarity bias leads boards and companies to pick successors who look like the current leader, which can reinforce the same blind spots in leadership fit and hiring a CEO decisions. FitHappens is hosted by Jason Baumgarten, Former Head of the Global CEO and Board Practice at Spencer Stuart. The show covers CEO succession, hiring a CEO, board of directors dynamics and governance and leadership fit and performance. New episodes every week at fithappens.fm. Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaumgarten/Email the show here: jason@fithappens.fm 00:00 Two finalists, one big question01:34 What potential actually means02:40 Why companies can't agree on the definition03:37 Only 1 in 10 measure ambiguity04:09 Same person, opposite verdicts at two companies05:01 Over 40% don't belong on the list05:37 35 years of research on leadership potential06:21 Learning agility defined06:39 Mental agility07:03 People agility07:25 Change agility07:44 Results agility08:15 Why confident people are riskier bets09:26 What the Center for Creative Leadership found10:03 Why interviews hide the real signal11:03 The quiet candidate's answer12:05 Back to the two finalists13:11 A reference call that changed my habits15:22 Confidence, competence and gender16:22 The first time test19:32 What to ask on reference calls21:14 A question to ask yourself21:45 The real cost of getting potential wrong22:57 Similarity bias in succession planning23:37 Homework for managers

    The Hidden Science Of Leadership Potential (And Why Most Companies Get It Wrong)

  5. Oct 1

    How Market Research Tricks Leaders into Making The Wrong Decisions

    Jon Cohen spent decades calling elections before founding an AI company built to fix his own industry. I sat down with Jon Cohen, founder and CEO of TrueDot.ai, who spent his career running polling at ABC News, the Washington Post, and Pew before becoming chief research officer at SurveyMonkey. We talk about why he never let himself get promoted out of the actual work, what it felt like calling presidential elections on deadline, and why he thinks executive fit depends on leaders getting real data instead of numbers designed to look good. Jon walks through the Michigan Senate primary that upended pre-election polling, and the idea he coined to explain it: plausibility is not validity. We get into why so much market research is built for number generation instead of truth seeking, how leadership coaching programs and executive coaching for leaders could benefit from the same kind of rigor pollsters apply to their own data, and why checking numbers by hand has quietly been the way researchers train judgment for generations. Jon also talks about what happens to that training pipeline as AI takes over the checking work itself, and where the next generation of deep expertise actually comes from. This conversation also gets into culture fit inside research teams, the discipline of asking a genuinely useful question instead of an easy one, and why leadership fit so often comes down to whether a leader is willing to hear the truth instead of the number that makes the trend line go up. Key takeaways: Jon built a system to ingest historical polling data because scarcity forced him to do more with less at both the Washington Post and ABC NewsThe Michigan Senate primary showed how pre-election polls and prediction markets can all be wrong in the same direction at oncePlausibility is not validity: a number can sound reasonable and still be wrong, and leaders need a system for testing which one they are looking atMost market research is built to keep a trend line moving up and to the right, not to generate genuine insightChecking numbers by hand has traditionally been how researchers develop judgment, and AI tools that automate that step raise real questions about how the next generation learnsJon's advice against choosing a career too early shaped a path that took him from a history degree to programming to running polling operationsExecutive coaching for leaders and leadership coaching programs benefit from the same rigor Jon applies to survey design: know what you will do with the answer before you ask the questionFit Happens is hosted by Jason Baumgarten, Former Head of the Global CEO and Board Practice at Spencer Stuart. The show covers CEO succession, hiring a CEO, board of directors dynamics and governance and leadership fit and performance. New episodes every week at fithappens.fm Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaumgarten/Email the show here: jason@fithappens.fm 00:00 Cold open00:47 Welcome, Jon Cohen01:15 From history major to predicting the future02:57 Policy institute versus the newsroom05:50 Calling elections at the Washington Post09:14 What got easier and harder in polling14:18 Building TrueDot to fix the industry19:11 Democratizing research tools for executives23:44 The Michigan Senate primary surprise27:16 Plausibility is not validity33:11 The researcher in the loop36:20 Where does the next Jon Cohen come from45:19 Speed round51:11 Closing thoughts

    How Market Research Tricks Leaders into Making The Wrong Decisions

  6. Sep 24

    Stop Hiring The Person Who Wins The Room

    A candidate lights up the room in the debrief, and a year later the company is searching again. Here's why. I open this episode with a scene that will feel familiar to anyone who has sat in a hiring debrief. The candidate walks out, the folder full of scorecards and reference notes sits untouched on the table, and someone senior leans back and says, "I just really liked her." Heads nod. The room shifts from evaluation to formality. Nobody compares evidence. The verdict arrives before anyone has opened a single page. This episode is about that moment, and about chemistry, the feeling in an interview when it just clicks. I've spent decades in executive search and leadership advisory, sitting in rooms like that one with boards and CEOs deciding who the leader should be, and I want to walk through why chemistry feels like good judgment but actually works like a shortcut around it. I bring in research that should change how you run your next debrief: a study where interviewers given completely random, disconnected answers walked away feeling just as insightful as the ones who heard the truth, and where those random interviews actually made predictions worse than using past performance alone. I look at why structured interviews predict job performance roughly twice as well as loose conversational ones, and why fit so often just means "this person reminds me of me." I also bring in the economic idea of an information cascade, and how the first strong opinion in a debrief can quietly outweigh everyone else's private judgment. Then I walk through the fix. I call it the chemistry ledger: a simple two line discipline where competency gets scored first, independently, with evidence, before anyone in the room says whether they liked the candidate. Chemistry gets recorded and weighted separately, and only discussed after the evidence is on the table. It's a small change in sequence that protects the parts of ceo succession and executive fit that actually predict performance, without throwing out the human part of hiring. If you are involved in hiring a ceo, sitting on a board making a board recruitment decision, or simply running your next leadership debrief, this episode gives you a concrete tool to use before the next offer goes out. Key takeaways: Chemistry feels like good judgment, but it functions like an anchor that shapes everyone who speaks after itResearch shows random, disconnected interview answers can produce just as much interviewer confidence as real onesStructured interviews predict job performance roughly twice as well as unstructured conversationFit is often measured by resemblance to the evaluator, not by evidence of abilityThe first strong opinion in a debrief can function like an information cascade, pulling the room along with itWarm, agreeable groups are especially exposed to groupthink because they lack rules protecting disagreementThe chemistry ledger separates competency scoring from chemistry scoring, with evidence required for bothWeight how much chemistry should matter for the specific role before the debrief begins, not during itOrganizations that removed bias from major decisions saw returns up to 7 percentage points higherIn a survey of failed hires, 82% of managers said the signs were there in the interview all alongFit Happens is hosted by Jason Baumgarten, Former Head of the Global CEO and Board Practice at Spencer Stuart. The show covers CEO succession, hiring a CEO, board of directors dynamics and governance and leadership fit and performance. New episodes every week at fithappens.fm. Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaumgarten/Email the show here: jason@fithappens.fm 00:00 Welcome to Fit Happens00:35 The room that already decided02:04 Why the winning candidate is often wrong03:44 The one line to remember04:23 The interview that was mostly random06:47 Structured interviews beat conversation07:16 Fit as resemblance to the evaluator09:00 The information cascade explained09:57 A debrief I remember early in my career10:47 Groupthink and the warm room12:15 What the room was really measuring13:44 Keep chemistry, but make it vote last14:19 Introducing the chemistry ledger16:14 Francis Galton and the ox at the fair17:27 Amazon's bar raiser program18:03 Real chemistry versus interview chemistry20:01 Bias, returns and the financial case21:15 Try this in your next debrief22:16 Closing thought on the chemistry ledger

    Stop Hiring The Person Who Wins The Room

  7. Sep 17

    What Wildfires Can Teach Executives About Leadership

    Why does experience in one crisis so often fail a leader in the next one? I open this episode with the story of the 1949 Mann Gulch wildfire, where foreman Wagner Dodge lit an escape fire to save his crew and nobody followed him. Thirteen men died. Forty five years later, at South Canyon, fourteen more firefighters died in strikingly similar circumstances, and I use both disasters to ask a question that matters far beyond wildland fire: why is it so hard to drop the tool that once made you successful? This episode is about what boards, investors, and leaders actually mean when they call someone crisis tested, and why that label hides more than it reveals. Executive search firms and boards often reach for that phrase as shorthand for readiness, but tested by what? A cash crisis, a collapse in employee trust, a global epidemic, these are not the same leadership assignment, even though they get filed under the same word. I walk through research on extreme context, threat rigidity, and the "romance of leadership" to show why a leader's past crisis performance may not transfer to the next one, and why executive search consultant work in this area demands more than a good war story. I also get into the identity problem underneath all of this. Wagner Dodge's crew held onto their tools because those tools were part of who they were as firefighters. The same thing happens in the boardroom. The operator who cuts costs, the founder who ships fast, the consensus builder who brings everyone along, each of them can get trapped by the very strength that made them valuable, right when the situation calls for something else entirely. I share a hypothetical example of a CFO who saves one company with a small, tightly controlled decision team, then reaches for that same tool at her next company when the actual problem is a trust crisis, and it makes things worse. Toward the end, I give you a practical framework for interviewing crisis leaders (and for auditing your own current decisions): ask not just what they did, but what they misunderstood at first, what evidence changed their mind, and whether they built resilience into the people around them or just personally carried the whole thing. I close with a 24 hour challenge you can run on a decision you're committed to right now. Key takeaways: The label "crisis tested" is meaningless without specifying which crisis, since different threats require entirely different leadership skillsSean Hanna's extreme context framework and Boris Groisberg's research on star analysts both suggest that past performance under pressure does not automatically transfer to a new context or teamWildland firefighting research from Michelle Barton and Kathleen Sutcliffe found that noticing a warning sign isn't enough, voicing concerns and seeking other perspectives is what actually helps people change courseThreat rigidity, first described by Barry Staw and colleagues, shows how pressure narrows information processing and concentrates control, often at the exact moment more perspectives are neededA leader's greatest strength can become the tool they can't put down, whether that's speed, consensus building, or a tightly controlled decision processThe best interview question for a candidate who claims crisis experience is not about the win, it's about what they misunderstood at first and how they changed courseBoards can unintentionally teach leaders to conceal uncertainty by demanding total confidence instead of candorConnect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaumgarten/Email the show here: jason@fithappens.fm 00:00 The Mann Gulch fire and the escape fire nobody followed02:16 What does crisis tested actually mean03:38 Sean Hanna's framework for extreme context04:01 Boris Groisberg's research on star analysts changing firms05:41 The difference between a problem getting worse and a problem changing entirely07:08 What happens when people can no longer agree on what is happening08:26 Making your explanation impossible to challenge08:53 When intuitive expertise deserves your trust10:06 Why firefighters cling to their tools as identity11:30 Threat rigidity and narrowing information under pressure12:16 Ranjay Gulati's research on companies that flourished after recessions14:02 Separating who decides from who contributes information16:00 The board's responsibility in rewarding candor16:19 The romance of leadership and how we rate charismatic leaders18:05 A hypothetical CFO and the tool that stopped working21:00 What to actually ask a candidate about their crisis experience22:36 Your 24 hour drop test challenge

    What Wildfires Can Teach Executives About Leadership

  8. Sep 10

    What AI Is Doing To Leadership with Liat Ben-Zur

    A leader who looks safe on paper might be the riskiest hire you make in the AI era. That's the paradox at the center of this conversation. I sit down with Liat Ben-Zur, a longtime technology executive who has led through four major shifts, the internet, mobile, IoT, and now generative AI, at companies including Qualcomm, Philips, and Microsoft. Liat is also the author of a new book on leadership and bias, and we get into why the very experience that used to make someone a safe executive hire can now be the thing holding them back. We talk about why AI is not just a tool but something that rewires org design and leadership itself, why some highly accomplished executives freeze when their old playbooks stop working, and why leaders who have had to operate without a map, often because they never quite fit the traditional mold, are proving to be the ones adapting best. Liat gets candid about her own career, including hiding a core part of her identity for years to survive in rooms where she was often the only woman, and what she learned about leadership once she stopped hiding. We also cover why bias hidden inside an algorithm is more dangerous than bias spoken out loud, what boards get wrong about succession planning during AI transformation, and why asking better questions matters more than having the right answer. Key takeaways: Experience can become a liability in the AI era if it means applying yesterday's playbook to a fundamentally different problemAI is not a single tool, it is rewiring how every function works, from marketing to legal to supply chainLeaders who struggle most with AI tend to have built their authority on hierarchy, control, and being the expert in the roomBias embedded in an algorithm sounds objective and confident, which makes it harder to challenge than a human opinionUnconventional leaders who have had to navigate systems not built for them often develop sharper instincts for spotting bias and blind spots earlySystems thinking, not narrow function expertise, is becoming the key differentiator for executivesCommon succession planning failures include handing AI ownership to a tech team instead of the business functions that actually need to changeBoards should spend far more time on fewer, higher stakes questions instead of spreading attention thin across an agendaLearning agility matters more than relevant experience, because the next generation of decisions will involve technologies that do not exist yetHiding parts of yourself as a leader costs you the deeper connections that make you more effective, not lessConnect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaumgarten/Email the show here: jason@fithappens.fm 00:00 Cold open: the safe hire paradox01:12 Welcome, Liat Ben-Zur01:26 Is AI hype real or overblown04:00 Why AI changes every function, not just tech05:19 Boards pulling back on AI spend08:25 Why she wrote The Bias Advantage09:55 Leaders who adapt well vs freeze12:47 How AI changes who rises to leadership14:54 Defining the unconventional leader15:59 Why algorithmic bias is harder to challenge22:07 Qualcomm, Philips, Microsoft and never fitting in23:39 Hiding her identity to survive in the room25:43 The fish that cannot see their own water26:53 The new differentiator: systems thinking32:02 Mistakes in AI era succession planning40:11 Speed round begins40:41 Worst leadership advice she has received42:05 Best career advice she has received43:11 Advice to her 25 year old self48:24 What a good career really means

    What AI Is Doing To Leadership with Liat Ben-Zur
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out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Why do talented leaders fail in one role and thrive in the next? Jason Baumgarten has led hundreds of Board, CEO and c-suite transitions at Spencer Stuart. He covers CEO succession, how boards hire a CEO, and shares leadership research alongside candid opinions about leadership and governance. His guests include CEOs, Board Directors, Researchers, Authors and unique executives who share their own observations about leadership but also their own lessons and life stories. Jason covers everything from the impact of technology and AI on leaders to the personal toll and stress of leadership. Every episode brings new lessons, fresh perspectives and a glimpse into a leader’s story.

Information

  • Creator
    Jason Baumgarten
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    31
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Jason Baumgarten

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