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What returning CEOs miss about the companies they built

Test a returning CEO’s blind spots by identifying assumptions inherited from the company’s earlier phase and seeking evidence that could overturn them. Ask people who know the current work to challenge specific beliefs. Change a decision when the evidence changes, and show the team what you revised.

Confirmation bias is selective handling of evidence that favors an existing belief and overlooks or dismisses contrary information. The American Psychological Association’s 2018 defining entry, APA Dictionary of Psychology: confirmation bias, supports that distinction. Confidence describes how strongly you believe something; confirmation bias concerns which evidence gets considered. For a returning CEO, the practical test is whether reassuring and challenging accounts receive comparable scrutiny.

A private moment that makes the issue visible

Composite scenario, not a client case: At a weekend gathering, someone asks how it feels to be back at the company you built. You tell a familiar story about what customers value. Later, a manager sends a quiet correction: the largest current customers buy for a different reason. You recognize the story more quickly than the business it now describes.

Use the research within its limits

The company’s previous phase cannot determine today’s participation needs. Vroom and Jago (2007): The Role of the Situation in Leadership examines leadership in relation to the situation, including the information relevant to decisions. Apply that lens when choosing whom to consult about an inherited belief. The research does not establish that founders are uniquely biased or validate the interview proposed here.

State the decision before discussing personalities

Choose one belief that currently affects resource allocation, leadership assessment, or the customer offer. Avoid a general exercise in becoming more self-aware. The interview must expose a decision that can change.

Use the founder disconfirmation interview

  1. State the inherited belief. Write a concrete statement about the current business that you tend to accept because it was true before. Identify the decision resting on it. Include when the belief was last checked. A claim about customers from an earlier product era needs current evidence before it guides resource allocation.

  2. Define contrary evidence. Specify an observation that would make the belief less credible. Ask what you would expect to see if a competing explanation were correct. Describe a plausible competing explanation before you collect examples. Otherwise, almost any result can be reinterpreted as support for the original belief.

  3. Find informed challengers. Speak to people who handle the relevant customers or process now. Give them permission to correct the claim without having to criticize your whole history. Seek someone who encounters the relevant exceptions, not only managers whose reports summarize the average. Explain the specific claim you want tested.

  4. Check the strongest disagreement. Trace the counterexample through records or direct observation. Apply the same standard to reassuring stories as to inconvenient evidence. Check a favorable example through the same records used for the unfavorable one. Reputation should not change the evidentiary standard.

  5. Change the visible decision. Explain which assumption you revised and what follows. Keep the change proportionate to the evidence, and name what you still do not know. Tell the relevant owner which operating instruction changes. Publicly admitting a blind spot without changing a consequential choice leaves the assumption in control.

Turn your company story into claims that can fail

A founder’s account often bundles several beliefs together: customers prize personal access, the oldest account manager protects renewals, and a certain product makes the company distinctive. Separate them. Each belief may have different evidence and a different consequence. If they remain one story about what made the company successful, a manager must appear to dispute the whole history to correct one present fact.

Choose a claim that affects a current decision. Write what you expect to observe if it is accurate and what you would expect under an alternative explanation. For example, customers might renew because of dependable service rather than founder access. Relevant evidence could include reasons recorded in renewal discussions, service incidents, and what customers request when choosing between offers. The proposed comparison needs to fit the claim; collecting general praise will not settle it.

Preserve the date and population behind the claim. A belief may remain accurate for long-standing accounts and fail for newer buyers. That is a narrower revision than declaring the company’s history irrelevant. Segment the evidence only when the distinction helps explain a real choice. Avoid searching through increasingly small groups until one appears to rescue your preferred conclusion.

Give a challenger a bounded job

Do not ask a subordinate to list everything wrong with your judgment. Ask them to test one statement with evidence they can access. Explain which decision depends on it and when you need the answer. A narrow assignment makes it possible to contribute useful disagreement without delivering a verdict on the founder as a person.

Let the challenger present the strongest contrary example before you explain it away. Ask what happened, who observed it, and which records could clarify the account. If your first response supplies several reasons the case does not count, pause the interpretation and inspect those reasons. Some exclusions will be justified, but the same exclusion rules should apply to evidence that supports you.

Choose a reporting route suited to the power relationship. A manager may prefer a discussion with the board’s designated adviser when the disputed claim concerns your own conduct. Establish what can remain confidential and what a decision requires you to know. Do not promise anonymity if the facts would identify the speaker or if the organization cannot maintain it.

Examine the evidence you found easy to accept

Reassuring evidence deserves special attention because it may pass through the review with few questions. A familiar executive can describe a successful customer intervention fluently. Ask which part they performed, which outcome followed, and what else contributed. Use the same questions when a newer manager makes a claim. The aim is comparable scrutiny, not automatic disbelief of experienced people.

Consider the missing denominator. Three enthusiastic customer conversations tell you something about those conversations. They do not show how all customers feel or how many accounts stopped participating. Ask how examples entered the discussion. If they were selected by the team defending a strategy, request a way to examine cases outside that selection.

Check whether your information route filters out exceptions. A founder may receive curated updates because managers believe only summaries are welcome. Visit the relevant work with permission and inspect ordinary records rather than staging a ceremonial tour. Tell managers what you are checking so direct access does not create a second, hidden chain of command.

Make the correction visible in the recovery plan

A useful revision changes a choice, a boundary, or the evidence still needed. Suppose current customers value dependable implementation more than rapid customization. The resulting action might be to protect implementation capacity before approving a new feature promise. State that consequence explicitly. Otherwise, a candid discussion can end while the budget continues to reflect the earlier belief.

Record what you retained as well as what you changed. A founder can discover that one customer assumption failed while another remains useful. This prevents the review from turning into a demand to abandon experience wholesale. It also gives managers a clear account of why the updated decision follows from the evidence.

Return to the claim when new information arrives, rather than treating one correction as proof that blind spots have been solved. Ask whether the changed decision produced the expected operating result. If it did not, inspect the reasoning again. The discipline is repeated willingness to revise particular beliefs, with consequences visible in the work, rather than a permanent label of being an open-minded leader.

Put the boundary into words

I believe this because it was true when I last ran the company. I need you to test whether it is still true. Show me the strongest current counterexample and the decision I would make differently if it holds.

Work through a bounded example

Hypothetical application: The founder assumes a long-serving executive is the main source of operational stability. Decision records show that a recently hired deputy has been resolving the critical escalations. The founder adjusts assessment and development plans instead of using tenure as a proxy for present contribution.

Check the failure mode before scaling

Do not hire a challenger and then punish the first challenge. Avoid collecting objections only from people already aligned with your preferred change. A disconfirmation exercise becomes another confirmation exercise if contrary evidence never receives a decision consequence.

Investigate inherited assumptions without delaying urgent risk containment. If a disputed belief concerns safety, cash availability, or a binding delivery commitment, involve the responsible specialist. Label temporary action as temporary, and keep the unresolved evidence question on the recovery agenda rather than declaring the founder’s judgment vindicated.

Review the work, then revise the arrangement

Review the beliefs that changed, the evidence that changed them, and the choices affected. Keep a short record of assumptions that survived scrutiny without treating survival as permanent proof.

Asking for disagreement is only an opening. Edmondson (1999): Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams concerns shared beliefs about interpersonal risk in teams. A manager’s silence may reflect the setting or the founder’s authority, so do not count an unanswered challenge request as confirmation that your assumption survived scrutiny.

Connect this decision to the next one

Place the inquiry within Returning as CEO: how to lead a company turnaround. Customer assumptions warrant How to keep key customers confident during a turnaround, while organizational assumptions connect to How to align middle managers behind a CEO turnaround. For another decision already attracting your support, use How to test the evidence behind a decision you already favor.

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