Glass cliff or breakthrough: four questions that tell you which one you're looking at

The board chair gets in touch on a Sunday afternoon. The division has run in the red for six quarters, the two leaders before you were women, and both were gone within eighteen months. The job is yours if you want it: a larger title, a raise of $90,000, a place on the executive committee, and a charge that, read closely, says "repair what two people before you could not, with the same budget and the same board." You are 53. Five years of groundwork have readied you for a job this large, and the timing of the offer makes its logic plain. Your answer has to reach the chair by this coming Friday, which is the date they have fixed.

Your competence is not what is really on trial here. The real question is whether this is a cliff or a breakthrough, and seen from outside, the two look the same.

Option A: Take the post in its current form

The downside here is plain to anyone who looks closely. Should the division fail to recover, you end up as the third name on that list, and people tend to remember lists. Boards seldom ask why three presidents in succession came up short. They ask who should be the fourth, and that person usually shows up with a bigger budget and more room to act. Russell Reynolds found, in a small sample so treat it as a warning sign and not a verdict, that women CEOs averaged 5.2 years in the post compared with 8.1 years for men. Short tenures follow a pattern, not bad luck.

Option B: Decline the offer

This choice has a visible cost too. Positions of this magnitude do not open every year, and "she passed on it" travels fast through Hartford's close-knit business circles, from the insurance corridor to the manufacturing plants of New Britain and Bristol. You protect your record, but you may also be giving up your single chance to show you can lead something that is losing money. Now and then, a cliff is simply a cliff. Other times it is the difficult job nobody else wanted, and whoever takes it gets the credit.

Option C: Take the post under terms you set

Agree to the role on conditions you spell out in writing before any signature goes down. A defined runway, a named board sponsor, a budget line that did not exist for your predecessors, and a measure of success at eighteen months that is more than simply "profitable." The risk is that you may hear no, and a no to reasonable conditions is one of the most useful answers you will receive all year. It reveals that they want a recognizable face in charge rather than a real recovery.

Counsel from veteran executives

Leaders who have taken a cliff job and come through it intact ask four questions before they commit.

1. What reasons did the last two leaders give for leaving, told in their own voices instead of the chair's? Call them. They will tell you.

2. What has changed since then? If the frank response is that the job was meant for you, treat that as flattery rather than a strategy.

3. Which member of the board will carry half the responsibility for this result alongside you? When no one in the boardroom can give that name, no one will defend you once the first quarter comes in below expectations.

4. Written down, what would count as success after eighteen months? Without a written standard, they have no fair basis for evaluating you, yet they will pass judgment all the same.

The decision

In the end, it turns on the opening question. If the previous two leaders were positioned to fail and only the title has been swapped, walk away or keep negotiating until something tangible changes. If something of real substance has shifted, say yes, but get it in writing and secure a sponsor. Real breakthroughs tend to resemble cliffs that come with funding attached.

Your vote

Which way will you go? Accept it, decline it, or accept on your terms. Cast your vote below. Next week we will release the findings, together with the question most of you said you would raise first.