promoting from – From measuring readiness and upskilling gaps to managing cultural risk, 19 leaders describe how they decide between promoting internal talent and hiring externally for senior roles—often blending both when the business needs either continuity or rapid change.
A senior hire can change how an entire organization breathes—who feels trusted. who feels passed over. and how quickly leaders can deliver results. For many leaders. the decision starts long before interviews: it begins with a hard look at what the role demands right now. what the company already has. and what it can realistically build.
When fast-moving growth calls for speed, some leaders lean outward. When continuity and culture are the lifeblood, many start by looking inward. Across 19 responses from members of the Fast Company Impact Council. a single theme keeps returning: the choice isn’t about “inside versus outside” as a slogan. It’s about whether the business has the right person for the next level—and whether the company can afford the consequences of getting it wrong.
Mark Smucker of The J.M. Smucker Company said the approach starts with assessing every role individually—matching the skills and experience required for senior leadership with each candidate’s alignment with company values. For his group. promoting an established leader can drive continuous improvement. while in other cases external perspectives can open new opportunities.
Tigran Sloyan of CodeSignal put the focus on capabilities and whether they can be built. He described durable skills like negotiation. communication. and probing for clarity. then emphasized foundational skills needed to manage others—whether managing humans or AI. If an internal candidate has the skills, promote. If not, hire externally. But he warned that companies can’t always “hire their way out” of a skills gap because nobody has the skill yet—making upskilling a partnership between talent acquisition and learning and development.
Manuel Freire Garabal of Gioya Higher Education Institution centered the decision on trust and capability. He said he often favors promoting people who have shown loyalty and commitment over time because integrity and trust are harder to instill. He still sees external talent as necessary when specific expertise or fresh perspectives are required. but he frames the goal as balancing trust and capability so long-term alignment doesn’t get sacrificed for technical excellence.
Several leaders described the internal-versus-external divide as a distraction from the real question: the person. Matt Owens of Athletics argued “it’s about the person. not the role. ” and said new hires can bring energy and expertise while internal promotion matters when the person is actually ready. Tony Grimminck of Scribd, Inc. said he assumes senior candidates have baseline technical skills and instead interviews for innate curiosity. authenticity. and judgment. choosing the person who shows the best judgment and cultural fit—regardless of where they come from.
For companies where institutional knowledge carries weight, promoting from within often feels less risky. Tony Bedard of Frontier Co-op said he tends to lean toward internal candidates because of their commitment and the value of what they already know. He described a preference for a curious. capable. hardworking employee who can do 75% of the job on day one. rather than an outside candidate who claims they can do 100%. Even then. he said they aim for roughly half of senior roles to come from internal promotions. complemented by external hires that bring fresh perspectives.
Brad Weber of InspiringApps argued that internal continuity is hard to replicate. Each member of his current leadership team has been with the company for over a decade. and he said that continuity shows in how the organization operates. He called external hires a real risk—not only because of the learning curve. but because they can disrupt a culture built over time. Still. he said there are moments when a specific skill set or fresh perspective warrants looking outside. but the bar is high and internal candidates get every opportunity first.
Eric Basu of Haiku, Inc. echoed the risk tradeoff in sharper terms. He said promoting internally is often the better fit if the company is willing to train the right candidate. By contrast. hiring externally can bring new personalities. politics. and drama—sometimes necessary. but often at the expense of the business. His view depends on whether internal candidates are vetted diligently and supported with training and mentorship; without both. a promoted person can fail and the company may lose an employee who previously performed well.
Paul Toomey of Geographic Solutions described the decision as a question of what the role requires at this stage of the company. When internal candidates have earned trust, understand clients, and are ready to grow, promoting from within reinforces culture and continuity. When senior roles need experience or expertise the company hasn’t developed internally. he said an external hire can bring needed perspective or scale.
Emily Kortlang of Yerba Madre framed it as a stage-of-growth question: high-velocity moments prioritize capability and speed. and external expertise can elevate the team and compress timelines. In steadier phases, promoting from within is faster and more cost-effective while building continuity, culture, and long-term retention. Her bottom line is that the decision isn’t either/or—it’s about what the business needs most right now: acceleration or optimization.
Justin Tobin of Gather offered a similar pivot: if the business is doing great and needs to keep going. institutional knowledge may be the right choice. But if the business is at a pivot moment that requires change. new thinking. or transformation. he said it probably calls for someone from the outside.
Not all leaders talk about hiring as a tradeoff between speed and continuity. Some talk about signal, identity, and how culture gets built. Todd James of Aurora Insights said promoting opportunities for people already in the company sends a powerful signal about the culture being built. He goes external only when the company needs something it doesn’t have enough of—whether that is a specific skill. a different operating model. or a catalyst for change.
Brett Bruggeman of Land O’Lakes, Inc. tied the decision to momentum rather than a straight line of career paths. He said growth doesn’t have to be linear for an organization, and institutional depth can be a competitive advantage. Even so. he said outside voices matter for challenging assumptions and exploring new growth avenues. and he learned that timing and business lifecycle often determine what the strongest team looks like.
Meredith Rosenberg of NU Advisory Partners described how preparation changes the debate. She said great hiring starts with defining the problem—not reviewing resumes—and getting clarity on outcomes in 12-24 months. the capabilities needed. and what leadership will move the organization forward. She added that internal candidates bring trust and institutional knowledge while external leaders introduce fresh thinking and challenge assumptions. and that AI can help pressure-test leadership fit and capability gaps—though judgment still matters most.
Rachael Nemeth of Opus Training sharpened the question further: can the organization afford to learn into the role. or does it need someone who has already made the mistakes?. She said that cuts through noise and that she has a strong bias toward internal promotion because culture compounds. She also cautioned against confusing “a great contributor” with “the right leader for a larger remit. ” saying conflating the two disserves both the person and the company.
Some leaders made the cultural case even more directly. Lindsey Witmer Collins of WLCM Studio said she intentionally keeps her team lean. made up only of highly skilled people she trusts. which is why she always promotes from within. Hiring someone new. onboarding. and getting them up to speed is. in her view. too much work when she believes it’s less likely to work out.
Logan Mulvey of GoDigital Music described a similar preference: developing and promoting from within rewards loyalty and preserves company culture. External hires come only when the company needs specific specialized skill sets or a level of experience it cannot effectively train in-house.
At the other end of the spectrum. Minna Song of EliseAI pointed to balancing internal growth with the reality of rapid expansion. She said the company is always looking for people who think like founders and own outcomes end-to-end. whether someone grows from within or joins from the outside. She noted that since last year, her team grew by 100%.
In scaling organizations. Patrick Frend of Delve said the right mix can prevent a company from copying someone else’s playbook. He described value in balancing leaders who deeply understand the business. customer relationships. and what differentiates the company with leaders who have been through similar growth and transformation journeys at industry-leading companies. For him. outside perspective can accelerate change and help avoid common scaling mistakes—but only when paired with people who understand the culture and strengths already in place.
Even when leaders strongly prefer one route. the through-line across all 19 responses is that the decision is supposed to be disciplined. not automatic. The stakes are personal and organizational at once: promote the wrong internal person and you can lose both performance and morale; bring in an outsider who doesn’t fit and you can destabilize culture and widen the learning curve. Start by defining what success looks like. determine which capabilities the business needs now. and then match the role to the person who can deliver it—whether that person is already in the building or needs to be found beyond it.
internal promotion external hiring leadership senior roles organizational culture talent acquisition upskilling leadership fit business growth Fast Company Impact Council