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Hiring a managing director in a context of SME growth
In Quebec, SMEs represent 98% of businesses and employ nearly two out of three workers in the private sector. This economic weight masks a reality that any growing founder ends up facing: the moment when it is necessary to recruit a managing director to take over the operational role.
Chez Thorens Talents, we observe that this decision is the riskiest tipping point in the life of an SME. It is the transition from an entrepreneurial mode centered on the founder to a structured organization, capable of supporting sustainable growth without losing its DNA.
To remember
- Tipping point: The recruitment of a CEO marks the transition from an entrepreneurial mode to a structured organization — a shift that the majority of SMEs do not negotiate well.
- Rare profile: Candidates who are able to combine operational execution and strategic vision while respecting the existing culture are exceptionally rare.
- Financial risk: The total cost of failing to become a CEO exceeds 1.5 times the annual salary, not to mention the slowdown in growth.
- Founding challenge: Without a clear governance framework between the founder and the new CEO, the transition becomes unclear and paralyzes decision-making.
Summary
- Defining the role of the CEO: the first pitfall
- Integrating an external CEO into an entrepreneurial culture
- Attracting experienced CEOs: an attractiveness challenge
- Structure without stifling agility
- Have a long-term vision
- Thorens Talents support
Defining the role of the CEO: the first pitfall
In a growing SME, the position of CEO is by nature evolving. Short-term expectations, stabilizing operations, structuring processes, differ from those in the medium term: managing growth, establishing governance, building a management team.
The recurring dilemma:
- Recruiting an operational profile capable of “putting your hands in the engine”?
- Or a strategic profile, focused on vision and long-term planning?
Candidates who are able to combine these two dimensions are rare. According to Thorens Talents, the most frequent risk is the gap between the CEO's past experience and the future reality of the company. A successful manager in a stable context may find himself ill-equipped when faced with an SME that is still under construction. Conversely, an entrepreneurial CEO can be overwhelmed when the organization changes scale.
Integrating an external CEO into an entrepreneurial culture
Growing SMEs are marked by strong internal cohesion, informal relationships and a culture shaped by the founder. The arrival of a new leader is often seen as a questioning of the ways of doing things that allowed initial success.
The CEO must quickly establish his credibility, gain the trust of the teams and demonstrate that he understands the reality on the ground before implementing changes. Long-term employees are naturally reticent when faced with leadership that introduces new rules and structures.
On the founder's side, delegating general management implies relinquishing direct control. Without a clear governance framework, who decides what, how disagreements are mediated, the transition becomes unclear, undermining the authority of the CEO and slowing decision-making.
Attracting experienced CEOs: an attractiveness challenge
SMEs face direct competition with large organizations for management profiles. The differences are structural: salaries, bonus programs, established structures and a recognized employer brand.
For an SME, the CEO position offers real impact and incomparable decision-making flexibility. But it also involves a high level of risk: uncertainty related to growth, significant workload and sometimes limited resources.
The cost of failure is particularly critical for SMEs. Wages, fees, internal disorganization and slower growth can seriously compromise its trajectory. At Thorens Talents, our role includes positioning the offer in a competitive manner among passive candidates. We are not selling a job, we are presenting a business project.
Structure without stifling agility
The CEO recruited in a context of growth is expected on the short term results. He must quickly understand the business, deliver measurable gains, and build the foundations for the next phase.
The balance challenge:
- Make practices evolve towards more structure: processes, indicators, governance.
- Maintain the agility and the spirit of initiative that allowed initial success.
- Implement formalization without it being perceived as excessive bureaucratization.
Candidates who arrive with a large company playbook ready to apply fail almost always. Those who succeed understand that each SME is a unique ecosystem, with its own codes and its own thresholds of tolerance for change.
Have a long-term vision
Beyond operations, the CEO must translate growth ambitions into concrete strategic guidelines. In an SME, the vision is often implicitly carried by the founder, and is rarely documented. Making it collective and mobilizing is a demanding exercise.
The alignment between the vision of the founder, who often remains a shareholder, and that of the CEO must be negotiated explicitly, otherwise there will be recurring conflicts. SMEs that succeed in their transition are those where founder and CEO co-build a shared vision before even taking office.
How Thorens Talents supports this type of mandate
The recruitment of a CEO in SMEs growing requires an approach that is radically different from traditional signage. Targeted candidates are already in place, rarely visible and in high demand.
What we bring:
- An evaluation of leadership beyond the CV: managing the founder-CEO relationship, tolerance for ambiguity, ability to structure without rigidifying.
- An active network of passive candidates who have successfully completed comparable SME transitions.
- Full support, from profile framing to integration monitoring.
The challenge is not to recruit a competent manager. It is choosing a strategic partner capable of supporting growth without stifling its agility.
Is your SME ready for a CEO capable of driving growth?
Contact our executive recruitment specialists: 514 842-7846
FAQ
When should a growing SME recruit a managing director?
The clearest signal is when the founder devotes more time to operational management than to strategic development. When decision-making slows down because it depends on one person, or when growth is stagnating despite a buoyant market, recruiting a CEO becomes a strategic imperative.
How to avoid the cultural gap between an external CEO and an entrepreneurial SME?
The key is to assess cultural fit with the same rigor as technical skills. Thorens Talents measures the candidate's tolerance for ambiguity, his ability to operate without pre-established processes and his ability to respect the entrepreneurial heritage while providing structure.
