Most searches check neither. The seat that breaks your next round is the one no CV shows. I find it in 60 minutes, while the move is still a choice.
Shaped by fifteen years and more than a thousand executive conversations.
The wrong move is the wrong role for the stage. You hire a strong person for a seat this stage did not need. Or the seat it did need stays empty. The hire works out. The company still loses the phase. A flat round. A year of runway gone.
The wrong fit is the right role, the wrong person for the stage. The CV fits. A year in, the work stops feeding them. The energy thins. The best work stops. By the next raise, that seat is the gap investors price first.
Every biotech breaks in patterns, and the patterns are set by two things: where the company came from, and where it is in its life. So I start there, not with the empty seat. I place the company on the lifecycle from what can be observed. The round, the headcount, the clinical phase, the board. Not from what the founder hopes it is.
Not a prescription. The shape of where a company stands and the stage it is heading into. Series A to Public is where I work.
The signals are different at every stage. These are the ones I watch for in a company heading into Series B, when the first functions are forming and the gaps start to show. Not yet which role. The point is to catch the gap while a move is still a choice, not yet a crisis.
Want to see the pattern in your stage? What leadership it needs now, and what the next stage will need?
Book a diagnostic call →Capability gets a person into the seat. Whether the seat keeps feeding what drives them decides whether they stay and do their best work. Capability is the visible part, and everyone screens for it. Need fit is the part no CV shows.
Every executive is driven by two of six human needs: Certainty, Variety, Significance, Connection, Growth, Contribution. Which two dominate, and whether the seat ahead still feeds them, decides whether they stay outstanding. The need stays constant. The vehicle that feeds it does not. A seat can still carry a need in its title and starve a person whose vehicle for it the stage has quietly removed.
A CFO whose two needs are Significance and Variety is at her best on a roadshow and in a fast raise. The three quiet years of steady finance that follow do not meet those needs. Same person, same skill, and within two years the energy is gone.
A CFO whose two needs are Certainty and Connection is the opposite. Steady governance and a settled team are exactly what she needs. A sudden pivot, all improvisation, wears her down.
Same CV. Same capability. Different stage. The needs decide who stays at their best.
Lay a person's two needs against the seat at the stage ahead, and a leader lands in one of four places.
Building or running a company? The question is whether the next phase will still feed you, or whether it is time to move on.
Backing one? The question is whether your team's needs are met in the next stage. Coaching will not change a person, and should not. Understanding the fit does.
Book a diagnostic call →Start with the company. A mid-stage biotech, moving out of discovery into the clinic. Ask what the next stage actually rewards, and the answer is consistent: Growth and Contribution. The work turns from invention to disciplined development. The thrill of the new thins out. What feeds a leader now is the drug moving closer to patients, and the appetite to master a job that keeps changing.
Now look at the founder. I would argue most founders run on Significance and Variety. It is why they founded a company at all. Variety is the pull of the new, the unknown, the next problem no one has solved. Significance, for a founder, is usually the need to make the calls. To be the one who decides. Autonomy and authority. Those two drives are exactly what starting a company demands, and exactly what the early stages feed.
So the same drives that made the founder build the company are the ones the next stage stops feeding. He has done nothing wrong. The stage changed under him. The work that used to run on his energy now runs on something he is not built for, and the energy thins a quarter at a time.
This is the transition. The leader the next stage rewards is wired differently from the one who founds. Not the same person grown up. Made for a different chapter.
Founders thrive on Variety and Significance first. Later those needs are starved. For a CEO the threshold runs a little wider, into Inflection and Scale.
One person, both sides of the table. The method is not invented. It is shaped through application and sharpened through study. Three pillars.
Fifteen years in biotech executive search. More than a thousand executive conversations that ended in a placement. Four biotech cycles, watched end to end.
Tony Robbins' three questions for partnering and his six human needs, refined through years in his Mastery University and Business Mastery programmes. A trained eye for how a leader decides under pressure.
Person-job fit from Amy Kristof-Brown: whether a role meets a person's needs predicts staying better than capability. Self-determination theory from Deci and Ryan. Mindset from Carol Dweck. Organisational lifecycle and founder-transition research from Greiner, Adizes, Wasserman and Ibarra.
Three sources. One way of thinking. Applied one mandate at a time.
The Rados Method is how Christian Rados judges a biotech leadership hire. It turns on two fits, always in this order. Stage fit: what the company needs, now and at the next stage. Need fit: whether the seat feeds the person in it. Most searches check neither.
Stage fit is the company side. Every biotech breaks in patterns set by where it came from and where it is in its life. The company is placed on a six-stage lifecycle from what can be observed, the round, the headcount, the clinical phase and the board, which names the leadership role the stage already needs or the next stage will demand. It prevents the wrong move.
Need fit is the person side. Capability gets an executive into the seat. Whether the seat keeps feeding the two of six human needs that drive them, Certainty, Variety, Significance, Connection, Growth or Contribution, decides whether they stay and do their best work. The need stays constant while the vehicle that feeds it changes with the stage. It prevents the wrong fit.
Founders building a venture-backed, clinical-stage biotech, and the investors and boards backing them. The founder uses it to see which leadership move is due before it forces itself. The investor uses it to see whether the team they back fits the stage ahead.
In one of two ways. The wrong move is the wrong role for the stage, a capable hire for a seat the stage did not need, or the seat it did need left empty. The wrong fit is the right role and the wrong person for the stage, where the work stops feeding them and the best work stops. Both are visible before anyone signs.
A 60-minute diagnostic call, one-on-one, with no brief or pitch in advance. It starts with where the company is, not with a role, and ends with the one move that is due. The next step after that is always a scoped mandate for the role the call points to, never a paid diagnostic.
Fifteen years of biotech executive search and more than a thousand executive conversations. Leadership performance training, including Tony Robbins' six human needs. And empirical research, including person-job fit from Amy Kristof-Brown, self-determination theory from Deci and Ryan, mindset research from Carol Dweck, and organisational lifecycle and founder-transition research from Greiner, Adizes, Wasserman and Ibarra.
It comes from a look at your company, not a lifecycle in the abstract. No brief in advance, and no pitch. We start with where you are, not with a role.
Whether you are building the company or backing it, you leave knowing the one move that is due, and what raising from strength would take.
Book a diagnostic call →Or write to christian@rados-recruiting.com.