Many senior executives are responding to today’s slowing job market in the same way: stay put, deliver results, avoid unnecessary risk and wait for conditions to improve before making a move.
In a market shaped simultaneously by AI disruption, economic uncertainty and geopolitical volatility, that instinct is understandable. It is also, for many executives, the highest-risk strategy.
In a fast-moving environment, standing still can be the equivalent of moving backwards. While the threat of redundancy weighs heavily on most executives, they miss the more immediate threat of being sidelined: the slow drift from central to peripheral, from sought-after to overlooked.
Some of the questions Rialto consultants are asking of their clients right now are:
Given the time and space to reflect, few executives answer these questions with confidence. Most acknowledge they may need to consider reskilling, upskilling – especially in AI-related competencies and governance/soft skills – or repivoting; and that working continuously to ensure their contribution is relevant, visible and aligned with emerging strategic objectives is now essential.
Here, we consider different strategies to help leaders maintain career momentum, whether looking to secure their current position or embark on a new challenge or direction. For senior leaders considering their next move, the question has become more complex than whether to stay or go; it is about how to maintain relevance and career momentum in an executive job market that is becoming more selective.
The executive labour market is entering a more constrained phase. Economic growth across the UK and much of Europe has slowed, organisations are under renewed pressure to improve productivity and many boards are reassessing leadership structures as AI and automation reshape how work is delivered. In parallel, senior leaders are remaining in role longer than in previous cycles, narrowing succession pathways and reducing the number of senior vacancies coming to market.
The result is a structural shift rather than a temporary pause: fewer executive roles are being created at the same time as the pool of experienced leaders competing for them is growing. Waiting for conditions to improve can only serve to undermine and erode the professional growth and dynamics that shaped career progression over the past decade. Maintaining momentum now requires more deliberate and forward-looking career management.
The executives managing this environment well are making deliberate choices between distinct paths, each of which demands different preparation and timescale.
For executives who are well-positioned in their organisations and whose sectors are not in structural decline, the most effective near-term strategy may be to expand influence rather than change direction. This requires a different kind of intentionality.
Delivering expected results within a defined remit is the very least required. Leadership must also take visible ownership of the challenges that matter most to the board: AI governance, cost transformation, workforce redesign, international competitive positioning. Executives who lead substantively on the issues that define their organisation’s next three years tend to find that their market visibility improves through word of mouth and evidence of definable, measurable contributions. Thinking of oneself as a product with a market value that can rise and fall depending on ever-changing demands is a discipline that sharpens both performance and positioning.
This path also requires honest assessment of whether the current organisation offers the scope for that kind of contribution. A role that rewards operational continuity but does not create space for strategic evolution carries its own form of career risk, regardless of how well it is performed.
Most senior executives operate with an implicit sense of where they are heading. Few have a plan that has been tested against the actual conditions of the market they will be navigating.
A structured career plan at this level requires more than a list of target roles. It needs an honest mapping of where capabilities currently sit relative to where the market is heading; which sectors and functions are likely to grow, contract or transform over the relevant horizon; which credentialling gaps need to be addressed and over what timeframe; and what the realistic lead time is for the types of opportunities being sought.
A three-year horizon focuses on building from a current position of strength. A five-year plan creates room for deliberate capability development and relationship-building that cannot be rushed. A ten-year framework, particularly for executives in their forties or early fifties, opens up the possibility of a more phased non-sequential path: a second significant operational role, a transition into advisory or board work and a portfolio career as a designed endpoint rather than a default. Executives who adopt this kind of longitudinal perspective consistently report that decisions they previously found difficult – whether to move sideways, invest in development, engage with a headhunter – become considerably clearer. Having this framework provides a lens to evaluate choices and align them with enduring career goals.
This is work that benefits from external challenge. A mentor or coach who understands the executive market deeply, has access to current intelligence on where boards are focusing and what they are looking for, and can provide honest assessment rather than affirmation, materially changes the quality of the planning process.
For executives who are within five years of a planned move, or whose sector or organisation is undergoing structural change that will reduce or alter available opportunities, transition preparation needs to start considerably earlier than instinct might suggest.
Executives who secure the best outcomes in constrained markets begin positioning 18 to 24 months before they move. By the time a role is needed, the groundwork – market visibility, refreshed credentials, cultivated relationships with search professionals and board-level decision-makers – needs already to be in place. A significant proportion of senior appointments at the highest levels are made through existing relationships and trusted referrals rather than through formal search processes. Executives who are not already on the radar of relevant decision-makers are, effectively, not in the initial frame of consideration.
Transition preparation in this environment specifically requires demonstrable engagement with the transformation challenges boards are currently navigating: AI deployment, human-machine workflow redesign, organisational cost discipline at scale. Executives whose narrative is built primarily on historical achievement, without evidence of current engagement with where the market is going, will find themselves at a structural disadvantage relative to candidates who can speak to both.
Structured career transition support, whether through a formal career transition programme or targeted coaching, provides the external perspective, market intelligence and preparation rigour that this process requires. The investment is most productive when it begins early, while an executive still has leverage, credibility and time on their side. You can read more about how to time your exit before you are pushed here.
For executives whose sectors or functions face meaningful structural contraction over the next decade, beginning to build deliberately toward a portfolio or fractional career – a combination of non-executive directorships, advisory mandates, interim leadership roles and other income-generating activity – reduces dependency on any single sector or employer in a way that a single operational role cannot.
Executed well, a portfolio career offers greater resilience to sector-level disruption, a wider network of relationships across industries and functions, and often a higher degree of professional fulfilment than a traditional role at a comparable career stage. Many of the most effective senior leaders in the market today have arrived at portfolio careers by design and have found that the transition was significantly smoother because they began building the relevant profile, relationships and board-level credibility while still in a substantive operational role. Read more about how and when to develop a portfolio career in our earlier insight.
The same structural disruption contracting the traditional senior executive market is simultaneously generating genuine opportunity at the earlier stages of the company lifecycle. AI, energy transition, defence technology, health innovation and financial infrastructure are attracting significant capital, and the companies being built in those spaces need experienced leadership that most founding teams cannot supply from within.
At early stage, the attraction is influence: the opportunity to shape culture, strategy and organisational design from the ground up in a way that a corporate role rarely affords. Equity participation, though it requires patience and carries meaningful risk of delivering nothing, can produce returns that no salary progression in a listed company is likely to match. For executives with deep functional expertise in areas that early-stage companies are actively trying to build such as finance, operations, people, technology, regulatory, the entry point is often more accessible than it appears, particularly for those who have invested in visible market presence and a network that extends beyond their current sector.
At growth stage, businesses have typically proved their model and are scaling. The leadership challenges – professionalising processes, building management infrastructure, managing board relationships, preparing for an exit or public market – map closely to what experienced corporate executives have spent careers doing. The equity upside is more modest than at early stage but more reliable. The income expectation is generally closer to corporate norms.
In both cases, the reward-risk profile looks different from what most senior executives are accustomed to evaluating. Base compensation at early-stage ventures is frequently below corporate equivalents, sometimes significantly. Equity vesting schedules designed to release rewards over time to lock-in commitment typically run over four years, with cliff periods that create significant risk if the business deteriorates or the role does not work out. Executives who have operated within established systems often underestimate how much of their effectiveness in a corporate context depended on infrastructure they took for granted.
For executives genuinely drawn to this option, risk mitigation matters as much as due diligence on the business itself. Negotiating a consulting arrangement or advisory mandate before committing to a full-time role provides visibility into the culture and the founding team’s decision-making before the commitment is made. Retaining a portfolio of NED or advisory positions alongside a start-up role maintains an income floor and a professional identity that does not depend entirely on a single venture’s trajectory.
Sector fit matters considerably. Executives who make these transitions most successfully tend to be those joining a venture where their specific experience addresses a problem the business is actively struggling to solve. What the current environment creates, for those with the financial resilience to absorb income variability and a clear sense of what they bring, is a broader range of genuine openings than has existed for several years with the potential to revitalise a career and reignite motivation in ways that a conventional corporate move rarely can.
Each of these pathways offers a roadmap to maintain momentum, focus and relevance in a fast-changing landscape, clouded by uncertainty and volatility.
What connects them is the same underlying logic: action taken before it is urgent consistently produces better outcomes than action taken under pressure.
The executives who are sidelined in contracting markets are rarely those who made the wrong move. More often, they are those who made no move at all; who stayed within comfort zones, who delivered results using a playbook while the market moved on – who waited for a conditions to improve then found their leverage and value had diminished.
Relevance decay accumulates quietly across months and years, in the gradually slowing cadence of approaches from search firms, in a peer group that has advanced into board and portfolio roles and in the growing gap between the questions boards are asking of candidates and the answers they know how to give.
Executives who remain alert to the ever-changing risks and opportunities and think ahead in years, not months, are those who will shape the future of their organisations and remain in control of their own career paths, earning potential and, ultimately, life goals and fulfilment.
Rialto partners with executives to protect what they have built and navigate their next critical phase of career transition. Our specialised programmes help leaders map priorities, explore opportunities both within and beyond their current organisation and communicate next steps strategically to secure desired futures. With deep expertise in market intelligence and UK/European executive markets, Rialto delivers boutique, discrete, highly personalised support during critical transitions.
Contact Rialto on +44 (0) 20 3746 2960 to discuss your career development strategy.
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