Stop Looking for Unicorns, They Don’t Exist

We sit down with every executive at the start of a search. Almost every conversation goes the same way. 

They start describing the role, and somewhere in the middle, the real list comes out. This executive needs someone who can read their mood before they've said a word, adjust on the fly when the schedule blows up for the third time that day, and never take it personally when they're short in a meeting. That same person also needs to walk into the building and get along with everyone: the board members who expect polish, the head of sales who talks fast and hates process, the ops team that communicates entirely in spreadsheets, and the executive assistant three doors down who's been there fifteen years and doesn't love change. 

Then comes the line I hear almost every time. "We're looking for a unicorn. I hope you can help."

I understand exactly what they mean. They've had someone before who could do all of this, and they miss what that felt like. But naming it a unicorn is where the search goes wrong before it's even started. 

If you're looking for a unicorn, you haven't scoped the role correctly. Hot take: Unicorns don't exist. A person, however talented, cannot single-handedly solve for years of organizational shortcomings. If that's the job, good luck. You will be searching for a long time, and if you somehow fill it, you'll be disappointed by month three. 

The Job Description Isn't a Wish List for the Company

Nobody sets out to write an impossible job description. It happens gradually, and usually for a reason that has nothing to do with the actual role. 

Some of it is functional. Communication breaks down between departments, so leadership hopes a Chief of Staff will fix it. Decisions take too long, so the new hire is expected to speed them up. The executive's calendar is chaos, so surely one great EA can make it disappear. 

Some of it is personal. The executive is demanding in ways they don't fully see in themselves, so the role needs someone who won't be rattled by it. The organization has factions, strong personalities, and old grudges, so the role needs someone who can charm all of them at once. Nobody says this part out loud, but it's baked into "great with people" and "high EQ" more often than anyone admits. 

Each of these is a real problem. None of them is a hiring problem. 

Stack enough of these hopes onto one job description and you get a role built to compensate for gaps that exist above, below, and around it, both in how the organization runs and in how the people in it get along. That's not a Chief of Staff. That's a rescue mission with a title. 

One Hire Won't Fix a Systemic Problem

Here's the part that's easy to miss: if your company has multiple things going wrong, whether that's process or personality, the fix is rarely a single extraordinary hire. It's more than that. 

It might mean more than one role. A Chief of Staff handling executive priorities is a different job than an Operations lead fixing cross-functional handoffs. Asking one person to do both means neither gets done well. 

It might mean fixing the system before you fix the seat. A calendar that's constantly in chaos usually reflects unclear priorities at the top, not a weak EA. No hire, however sharp, undoes that on their own. 

It might mean addressing what leadership itself needs to change. If an executive is hard to read or hard to work for, that's worth naming honestly, not outsourcing to whoever gets hired next. The best Chief of Staff in the world can learn to navigate a difficult personality. They cannot fix one.

It might mean the organization has its own dysfunction to own. If half the company doesn't get along, that's a leadership and culture issue. A new hire can build bridges. They cannot be the only bridge. 

What to Ask Before You Write the Job Description

Before the search starts, separate what the role should own from what the company, and the executive, need to fix on their own. 

What is actually broken? Name it specifically. "Communication is bad" isn't specific. "Department heads don't know what the CEO's top three priorities are this quarter" is. "They're hard to work with" isn't specific either. What exactly makes them hard to work with, and has anyone told them? 

Is this one job or two? If the list of expectations spans strategy, operations, personal support, and playing peacemaker across the org chart, you may be looking at more than one hire, or a clearer boundary around what this one role actually owns. 

What will still be broken after this person starts? Be honest about it. If the answer is "several things," including how the executive shows up or how the teams get along, those need their own plan, not a line item in someone's job description. 

This is the same mistake I've written about before when it comes to defining the Chief of Staff role itself. The unicorn hunt is what happens when that design work gets skipped. Instead of asking what the role should actually own, companies default to describing a person impressive enough to make the question irrelevant. 

The Real Fix

Stop looking for the person who will make every problem disappear. Start building the structure that makes good people successful, and be honest about what a single hire can and can't carry.