The Context

The company had completed an acquisition twelve months prior. Two leadership teams — with different cultures, different operating models, and different expectations of what the COO role should look like — were still in the process of integrating. The CEO had been running both the combined entity's strategy and its day-to-day operations simultaneously for eight months. That was not sustainable.

The COO mandate was not a clean hire. The role's exact scope was still being negotiated internally. The reporting structure had two plausible configurations depending on which integration path the board chose. And the incoming executive would need to earn trust from two sets of existing leaders who each believed their operating model was the right one.

One search firm had already tried and produced no viable candidates in fourteen weeks. The brief they worked from had been written before the acquisition closed and had not been updated to reflect the post-integration reality.

The Diagnosis

1

The brief was pre-merger fiction

The existing search brief described a COO role in a company that no longer existed. It listed responsibilities that had been absorbed by other executives during the integration and omitted the three critical new responsibilities the role would carry in the combined entity. The search had been running against the wrong target.

2

Ambiguity tolerance was the primary filter

In a stable org, COO candidates are assessed on operational efficiency, team leadership, and cross-functional alignment. In a post-merger integration, the primary assessment criterion is whether the candidate has operated successfully in contexts where the rules were being written as they worked. This is a specific, learnable skill — but it is not present in every senior operations leader.

3

Candidate motivation had to be genuine

A COO who joins a post-merger integration for the title and the compensation will resign when the ambiguity becomes uncomfortable. The search required candidates who had specifically sought and thrived in ambiguous environments — and could articulate why, with evidence from their career.

The Intake Revision

Two hours with the CEO produced a fundamentally different brief: one that was honest about the unresolved scope questions, explicit about the ambiguity the candidate would need to manage, and specific about the two or three things that were non-negotiable. That brief — including the honest description of what was still in flux — actually made the search easier. Candidates who were attracted by it were self-selecting for the right reasons.

The Candidate Profile

The eventual shortlist included candidates who had either led integrations as an executive within a company, or had been brought in post-acquisition to stabilise an organisation. All three shortlisted candidates had reference data from prior colleagues who described them as people who "became calmer as the uncertainty increased." That was not coincidental — it was the filter.

The Placement

The placed COO had led the operational integration of a prior acquisition at a mid-market software company, where they had navigated exactly the dual-leadership dynamic the hiring company faced. Their reference conversations revealed a consistent pattern: they created clarity by defining what was not changing, rather than trying to resolve every open question before acting. That pattern was precisely what the role required.

Search Parameters

RoleChief Operating Officer
ContextPost-acquisition integration
Primary assessment criterionAmbiguity tolerance with a track record
Prior firm resultNo viable candidates in 14 weeks
Majhi Group resultShortlist in 3 weeks; placement at week 8

"The first firm gave us candidates who were exactly right for a stable organisation. Not one of them had operated in genuine ambiguity. The intake conversation changed what we were actually looking for — and the search was completely different from that point."

— CEO, post-merger technology company

What This Search Teaches

Post-merger leadership searches are not simply harder versions of normal searches. They require a different brief, a different candidate profile, and a different assessment framework. The candidates who succeed in stable environments — where the org chart is clear, the mandate is defined, and the operating model is established — are often the wrong candidates for an integration. The search must be designed for what the role actually is, not what it will eventually become.

Related case studies and resources:

Recovering a Failed SearchWhat Is a Search Mandate?What Is Founder-VP Fit?Executive Search MethodologyWhat Is a C-Suite Search?