Favored high-potentials are moved into roles just as successes land and out again before problems surface, so they collect credit for others' groundwork and none of the cost.
An example
At a private-equity-backed facilities services company, a rising executive arrived as general manager of the healthcare cleaning division four months before it closed its largest hospital contract, and was named in the board update and the next fund's marketing materials as the leader of a turnaround. The previous general manager had negotiated the contract over two years. Seven months later the executive moved to run a newly acquired security business that was weeks from completing its integration. Soon after the move, the hospital contract's margin came in eight points below plan, because the pricing had assumed staffing levels the division could not hire. The incoming general manager presented the write-down. At the next talent review the rising executive was described as a proven integrator, and the previous general manager's role disappeared in a reorganization.
Why it works
Arriving at the moment of visible success makes the favored person the named face on the press release and board update, turning another team's groundwork into a personal record. Leaving before write-downs, churn, or audit findings surface means paying none of the cost the tenure helped create, so the move is both attractive and cheap. Patient, full-cycle ownership looks worse by comparison, because peers who stay watch the cycled executive outpace them. It requires a sponsor with discretion over assignments, review cycles shorter than the time consequences take to appear, weak post-mortems, and a market that prices titles and visible wins above full-cycle results.
The thinking behind it
Lee Ross Ross's The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process (1977) names the fundamental attribution error: observers explain behavior by personal traits and underestimate the situation. A leader who arrives as a contract closes is credited with talent the situation produced, and a successor who inherits the write-down is blamed for it. Asking who built each result, and over what period, puts the situation back into the judgment.
Jonathan Baron Baron and Hershey's Outcome Bias in Decision Evaluation (1988) found that people rate a decision-maker as more competent when the outcome happens to be good, even with identical information. Whoever holds the role when good results land collects that credit, and whoever holds it when bad results land collects the blame. Credit cycling exploits the timing, and evaluating leaders on outcomes measured after they leave a role is the correction.
Warning signs
Shortly before launches, closings, or milestones, the same person arrives, and leaves before the post-mortem. Their tenures are short and their record is all wins. Successors inherit write-downs, customer losses, or findings that nobody owns. The people who built the results are absent from the announcements, and the same sponsor controls each assignment.
How to defend yourself
Lengthen the horizon and put names on every result.
- If you built a result, record your authorship while the work is underway: dated plans, contract histories, the decisions you made and when.
- In reviews, ask who built each result and over what period, and what happened to the person's previous units after they left.
- If you inherit a problem from a cycled predecessor, document the starting position in your first month, with numbers, and send it upward so the write-down is tied to its origin.
- If you sit on a board or represent investors, ask for attribution at the team level before accepting anyone's track record.
Clawback provisions and routine forensic post-mortems reattach people to the outcomes they helped seed, and they are what make cycling stop paying.
How a leader shuts it down
Evaluate leaders on outcomes measured after they leave a role as well as during it. Make post-mortems routine and have them name the people who made the decisions. Set minimum tenures for high-potential rotations, and tie part of incentive pay to results that arrive after the rotation ends.