Someone who opposes the obvious successor encourages more credible candidates to apply, so the favorite is compared against a fuller field and the board takes longer to decide.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
The retiring chief executive of a mutual insurer thought the board's favorite to succeed him, the chief financial officer, would cut the agency channel the company had been built on. He did not argue against her directly. He encouraged two division presidents who had run agency businesses, and an outside executive he knew from an industry board, to put their names forward, telling each that he thought the board should see a real comparison. All three met the published criteria. He told the board the same thing. The search took two more months, the board added distribution strategy to the criteria, and the chief financial officer, who won, presented a plan that kept the agency channel for five years.
Why it works
Delay becomes defensible, because a fuller slate lets the board say the comparison is still under way. The favorite loses some of the contrast that made them obvious, since their merits now compete with others' for the board's attention, and choosing them takes more work, because the board must explain why the winner beat each named candidate. It works when the added candidates are credible, the board prefers consensus to a split vote, and the favorite has no outside champion pushing for a quick decision.
The thinking behind it
Ronald H. Coase The Problem of Social Cost (1960) argues that because bargaining is costly in practice, the cost of reaching agreement, and not only the merits, determines what actually happens. Each added candidate raises a board's cost of agreeing: more packets to read, more names to reject and justify. That is why a fuller slate slows a decision, and why a cap on shortlist size and forced ranking, which cut that cost, restore the pace.
Herbert A. Simon A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice (1955) describes decision-makers with limited information, time, and capacity, who search among alternatives until one meets an aspiration level, a procedure Simon termed satisficing. A board with one obvious candidate can stop searching quickly. Adding credible names keeps the search open, so a candidate who seemed acceptable alone has to hold up against real alternatives.
When it fits
Credible candidates are the precondition. It fits someone with standing in the process, such as a departing leader, a director, or a search committee member, who thinks the obvious choice carries a risk the board has not weighed and wants that risk tested by comparison.
How to use it well
Name the concern first, and be able to defend it.
- Encourage only candidates who meet the published criteria, and tell each of them honestly why you think the board should see them.
- Tell the board openly that you want a fuller comparison and what question it should answer.
- Propose adding the criterion your concern turns on, so the comparison is about something.
- Accept the result. A favorite who wins against a full field wins with more standing.
Recruit no names you know cannot do the job.
What it costs and where it backfires
Delay has a price: the organization waits, the favorite may read the move as opposition and remember it, and each added candidate who loses becomes an aggrieved party. An outside director may count the list and ask who encouraged each name. Recruiting people you know are unqualified, purely as noise, and telling them it is a developmental opportunity misleads the candidates and the board, and that is where the clean form ends.
When it is used on you
Avoid attacking the added names when candidates with no comparable scope keep joining a shortlist, since it validates the noise. Push for predefined criteria, a cap on shortlist size, and forced ranking, and find an outside director willing to set each candidate's prior scope against the role in one table.