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Leadership Churn: When Replacing Leaders Becomes the Problem
Six Leaders. Same System. Same Result.
What Alpine's revolving door teaches boards about leadership churn, patience, and system failure.
Six team principals in four years. Each one was supposed to fix the problem. None stayed long enough to find out whether they could.
That is not leadership accountability. That is organizational impatience disguised as discipline.
I see this pattern in executive search constantly. A company replaces the CMO, CRO, CFO, or COO because the last one "didn't work." The next one fails in the same conditions. Then the next. Eventually, the board concludes the talent market is thin.
It usually isn't. The system is eating the hires.
Between 2021 and 2025, Alpine cycled through six team principals: Cyril Abiteboul, Davide Brivio, Marcin Budkowski, Otmar Szafnauer, Bruno Famin, and Oliver Oakes. Some lasted years. Some lasted months. Oakes resigned after ten. Throughout this entire period, Alpine's on-track performance remained stuck in the midfield.
Each new leader arrived with a diagnosis. Each diagnosis was probably correct. None lasted long enough to implement a solution.
This is the most complete example I know of a pattern that destroys companies as reliably as it destroyed Alpine's competitiveness: replacing the leader when the system is the problem.
The Sequence
The timeline matters because it reveals how the cycle accelerates.
Abiteboul departed as Renault became Alpine. Brivio arrived from MotoGP and was quickly moved aside when the team realized his experience didn't translate cleanly to F1's specific operational demands. Budkowski came and went. Szafnauer, one of the paddock's most experienced operators, lasted roughly eighteen months. Famin moved from interim to permanent and then out. Oakes lasted ten months.
Around them, the churn spread. Technical leaders, sporting leaders, senior advisors, and long-tenured operators all exited or were removed. Alain Prost, Alan Permane, Pat Fry, Laurent Rossi, Matt Harman, and Dirk de Beer all left over two years.
This was not a leadership transition. It was organizational spinning. Each diagnosis pointed to the person. None pointed at the system.
That is the trap.
Personnel change feels like an action. System repair feels slow. Boards usually reward the first and delay the second.
Three Dysfunctions No Leader Could Fix in Time
The Timeline Was Impossible
Organizational change in Formula 1 operates on an eighteen-to-thirty-six-month cycle. Design decisions made today appear in the car twelve to eighteen months later. Restructuring takes six months to implement and another twelve to produce measurable effects.
Alpine gave most of its team principals less than eighteen months.
If the work requires twenty-four months and the leader gets twelve, the assessment is invalid.
You didn't test the leader. You interrupted the experiment.
This is the CMO tenure problem applied to the entire leadership function. Brand strategy has a compounding curve. If the CMO is replaced before the curve appears, the board keeps resetting the clock and blaming the clockmaker. The leader is evaluated on a timeline shorter than the minimum required to produce results.
The Knowledge Kept Leaving
Each leadership change at Alpine triggered departures throughout the organization. When Szafnauer left, senior technical and operational leaders left with him. When they left, they took the context for dozens of decisions the next leader would need to understand.
Churn doesn't just remove people. It removes explanations.
The organization keeps the process but loses the logic.
The new leader arrives and asks: "Why are we doing it this way?" Nobody can answer, because the person who made that decision left six months ago. The new leader, lacking context, changes the approach. Their replacement asks the same question. The cycle of rebuilding context, making changes, losing context, and rebuilding again consumes organizational energy without producing forward progress.
The Organization Stopped Believing
After the third team principal change, the organization learns something destructive: nothing is permanent.
So the rational employee stops committing.
They don't resist. They wait.
Leadership churn creates organizational spectatorship. The engineers stop investing in long-term development because it won't survive the next restructuring. The strategists default to safe calls because bold decisions require organizational commitment that doesn't exist. The middle managers stop implementing changes because they've learned every change gets reversed.
Alpine's mediocre performance wasn't caused by mediocre people. It was caused by an organizational environment where sustained effort was impossible because sustained leadership didn't exist.
The Business Pattern
These are the searches that look rational one at a time and irrational in sequence.
The CMO Carousel. The company has had four CMOs in six years. Each arrived with a strategic vision. Each began implementing it. Each was replaced before it could produce measurable results. The board reviews the marketing function and concludes: "We keep hiring the wrong CMOs." The correct conclusion: "We keep replacing CMOs before their strategies can work."
The PE Portfolio Company. The PE firm placed a CEO. Eighteen months, no results. Replacement. The new CEO produced a turnaround plan requiring twenty-four months. At month fourteen, patience ran out. Third CEO. Same playbook. Same timeline. Same result.
The PE firm thinks it is upgrading leadership. The organization experiences a series of regime changes.
After the second reset, employees stop executing the plan and start watching the sponsor.
The VP of Sales Revolving Door. The company has replaced the VP of Sales three times in four years. Every new VP changes the comp plan, territory model, and forecast methodology. By the third change, the reps understand the real strategy: survive the VP.
Revenue is flat. Not because the VPs were bad. Because the organization stopped believing that any direction would persist long enough to matter.
The Diagnostic
Before replacing any leader, four questions should be answered honestly.
Has the current leader had enough time? If the strategy's natural timeline exceeds the leader's tenure, replacing them doesn't test the strategy. It abandons it. And the next leader's strategy will face the same timeline constraint.
Is the problem the leader or the system? If the previous two leaders failed in similar ways, the probability that the third will succeed with the same system is low. Something structural is producing the failure, and it will consume the new leader as efficiently as it consumed the old ones.
What conditions would make the next leader succeed that the current leader does not have? This question is critical. It forces the board to distinguish between replacing a person and changing a system. If they can't answer it, the search is premature.
If the answer is "a better person," you haven't diagnosed the problem yet.
What institutional knowledge does the departing leader leave with? If the knowledge loss from departure exceeds the potential gain from the replacement, the change is net-negative regardless of the new leader's talent.
Continuity vs. Churn
Mercedes gave Toto Wolff continuity. Strategy matured. Knowledge accumulated. Decision-making improved through repetition.
McLaren changed leadership — from Boullier to Seidl to Stella — but each transition was managed to preserve enough institutional continuity for the next leader to build rather than restart.
Alpine kept restarting.
Continuity does not mean never changing leaders. It means changing them in a way that preserves the system.
The company that resists the temptation to replace leaders prematurely — and instead invests in creating conditions where current leaders can succeed — produces results that the revolving door never can.
The Pattern
Some searches should not start with candidates. They should start with the question: why did the last three fail? The next leader may be better. It may not matter.
If the system remains unchanged, the organization will teach the new leader the same failure pattern it taught the last one.
Alpine didn't have a leadership shortage. It had a continuity crisis.
Before you replace the leader, ask whether the system has earned the right to another one.
Charlie Solórzano is a Managing Partner at Alder Koten, a boutique executive search firm specializing in C-suite and board placements across the U.S. and Mexico markets. He advises founders, investors, and boards on leadership transitions using The Race Conditions Model™, a proprietary diagnostic framework built on the thesis that leadership success is determined by conditions, not credentials.
About to Replace a Leader Who Didn't Deliver?
Before the search starts, the right question is whether the next leader will face the same conditions that defeated the last one. Diagnosing the system before defining the candidate is how you avoid the revolving door. If you're working through this decision, let's talk.
Schedule a Confidential ConsultationFrequently Asked Questions
How do you know whether to replace a leader or fix the system?
Ask whether the previous two leaders failed in similar ways. If they did, the probability that the next leader will succeed with the same system in place is low — something structural is producing the failure, and it will consume the new leader as efficiently as it consumed the old ones. The diagnostic question is: what conditions would make the next leader succeed that the current leader does not have? If the answer is "a better person," you haven't diagnosed the problem yet. If the answer is a specific structural change — authority, resources, timeline, reporting structure — the system needs to change before the search starts.
How long should you give a new executive before evaluating results?
At minimum, long enough for their strategy's natural timeline to mature. Most organizational strategies require eighteen to thirty-six months to produce measurable results — brand strategies, sales process redesigns, operational restructurings, and leadership development programs all compound slowly before they compound visibly. If a leader is evaluated on a timeline shorter than the minimum their strategy requires, the assessment is invalid. You didn't test the leader. You interrupted the experiment. The board that replaces leaders every twelve to fourteen months systematically produces the revolving door — not because it's making bad hires, but because it's not giving any hire the time required to succeed.
What does leadership churn do to an organization's culture?
It teaches the organization that nothing is permanent — and rational employees respond by stopping to commit. They don't resist. They wait. Bold decisions require organizational commitment that doesn't exist when leadership changes every year. Long-term development investments get abandoned because they won't survive the next restructuring. The middle layer stops implementing changes because they've learned that every change gets reversed. Leadership churn creates organizational spectatorship. Performance doesn't collapse immediately — it degrades through the gradual withdrawal of discretionary effort by people who have learned that sustained commitment is irrational under unstable leadership.
Why do PE-backed companies fall into the leadership replacement trap?
Because the investment thesis assumes leadership upgrades will accelerate performance — and the holding period creates pressure to see results faster than organizational change typically allows. A turnaround plan that requires twenty-four months gets evaluated at fourteen. The CEO is replaced. The next CEO inherits an organization that has already experienced one leadership reset, starts their own turnaround plan, and faces the same timeline pressure. The PE firm thinks it is upgrading leadership. The organization experiences a series of regime changes. After the second reset, employees stop executing the plan and start watching the sponsor. The churn destroys the organizational continuity that performance requires.
What should an executive search process evaluate before recommending a replacement?
Four things. Whether the departing leader had enough time for their strategy to produce results. Whether the pattern of failure is individual or structural. What conditions would make the next leader succeed that the current leader does not have. And what institutional knowledge leaves with the departing leader — if the knowledge loss from departure exceeds the potential gain from a replacement, the change may be net-negative regardless of the new leader's talent. Some searches should not start with candidates. They should start with the question: why did the last three fail?
What is the difference between a healthy leadership change and destructive churn?
Whether the transition preserves the system or resets it. McLaren made multiple leadership changes over a decade and produced a trajectory from ninth place to championship contender — because each transition was managed to preserve enough institutional continuity for the next leader to build on what the previous one had established. Alpine made six changes in four years and stayed in the midfield — because each transition reset the strategic direction, erased the institutional knowledge accumulated under the previous leader, and taught the organization that nothing was worth committing to. Continuity does not mean never changing leaders. It means changing them in a way that preserves the system.
