Stop Unicorn Hunting in 2026
At the end of 2025, I wrote about a mistake I was seeing everywhere: companies cutting large portions of their customer-facing teams after missing growth targets.
(If you missed it, this is a continuation of that warning: The Real Reason Your Firm Missed 2025 Targets - And Why Layoffs Won’t Save 2026.)
Fast forward a few months, and here we are again — just with a different flavor of the same problem.
Now the job postings are everywhere.
“I need a new CEO that will change our direction.”
“A new CRO will kickstart our sales.”
“A new Head of Sales will make our teams much more effective.”
“A new CMO will get us a bunch of leads.”
Round and round we go, Company A fires their leaders to get better ones that were just fired by Company B.
If you are simply looking for a temporary uptick because a new person is the relative of a potential client or spent 50 years in a particular industry, or talks about all the leads they have, go for it. Get your quick win and hope to convince your board or an investor it’s long-term.
If you are looking to build a foundation of growth, awareness, client-effectiveness, etc. then STOP!
Why Hiring New Leaders Won’t Fix Your Growth Problem
Let’s be clear: hiring great leaders matters. But swapping people without fixing the foundation is not strategy — it’s denial.
If your growth stalled in 2025, the odds are overwhelming that the issue wasn’t who was sitting in the seat. It was:
Confusion around what you actually sell
Inconsistency in how you go to market
Misalignment between sales, marketing, and delivery
A lack of clarity that makes every leader look ineffective
If this sounds familiar, read Stop Searching for Silver Bullets: Learn How to Tackle What’s Actually Holding You Back — it’s the same pattern, just with a different mask.
Yet instead of fixing that, companies chase unicorns.
They hire the “industry veteran.”
They hire the “connected rainmaker.”
They hire the “AI growth expert.”
But don’t confuse motion with maturity.
The Hidden Cost of Unicorn Hunting
Otherwise, you will drop millions on new hires, lose roughly 4 months per new hire for onboarding and effectiveness, and restart the cycle all over again.
ROI is the cheaper and more effective path to your long-term goals, if LONG-TERM growth is actually your goal.
Foundational Growth Requires Clarity, Not New Titles
Step 1: Let ROI come in and help you refine and solidify WHAT you are selling.
Step 2: Let ROI work with your teams to optimize HOW you are selling and marketing yourself.
Step 3: Let ROI evaluate WHO is selling, marketing, and delivering your company, and work with you on any potential transition plans.
Step 4: Let ROI continue a partnership of continued maturity and evolution.
These steps are the path to immediate improvements, long-term foundation establishment, and strategic team structure that will get you where you are going.
