Why Track Record Alone Fails to Predict Builder Performance
The most common proxy for Builder capability is also the least reliable one. Here's why organisations keep making the same appointment mistake.
Hiring committees love a strong track record. It feels like evidence. But most track records are built in stable contexts — managing existing teams, hitting established targets, optimising known processes. These are meaningful achievements. They just don't tell you much about how someone will perform when the market is undefined, the team doesn't exist yet, and the playbook needs to be written from scratch.
The conditions that produce a strong track record are precisely the conditions that Builders rarely operate in. Which means using past performance as the primary signal for Builder appointments isn't just imprecise — it's systematically misleading.
