The Early Warning Signs Your Senior Team Needs Strengthening Before It Becomes a Crisis

By the Time It Feels Like a Crisis, It Usually Already Is

Most food manufacturing executives don't decide to strengthen their senior team. They're forced to — by a resignation they didn't see coming, a missed target that exposes a leadership gap, or an operational breakdown that traces back to a vacancy that should have been filled six months earlier.

The companies that build the strongest leadership teams aren't reacting. They're reading the early signals and acting before the situation becomes urgent. This article outlines the warning signs that your senior team needs attention — and what to do when you spot them.

Warning Sign #1: One Person Is Carrying Too Much

Every mid-market food manufacturer has a version of this: one senior leader who knows everything, decides everything, and is involved in everything. The COO attends every operational meeting. The Plant Director whom every supervisor goes to directly. The VP of Quality, who personally signs off on every customer complaint.

This isn't a strength. It's fragility dressed up as indispensability.

When that person burns out, gets headhunted, or simply decides they've had enough, the gap they leave isn't just one vacancy — it's an organizational dependency that can take 12 to 18 months to properly resolve.

If your business were to be materially disrupted by the loss of a single senior leader, that's not a hypothetical risk. It's an active one.

Warning Sign #2: Your Senior Leaders Are Managing, Not Leading

There's a meaningful difference between a leadership team that manages the day-to-day and one that drives the business forward. When Directors spend most of their time firefighting, attending operational meetings, and resolving issues that should be handled two levels below them, it's usually a sign that the layer beneath them isn't strong enough — and that the Directors themselves may not be operating at the right level.

In food manufacturing, this often surfaces as: production issues that escalate to the Director level daily, quality problems that keep recurring without systemic resolution, and commercial opportunities that aren't being pursued because leadership bandwidth is consumed by operations.

If your senior team is permanently stuck in reactive mode, the business is being managed but not led.

Warning Sign #3: You're Losing Middle Management to Competitors

Director-level attrition gets the attention. But the early warning often appears one level below — in the departure of experienced production managers, quality managers, and operations managers who cite limited progression and uninspiring leadership as their reasons for leaving.

Strong Directors attract and retain strong people beneath them. When mid-level talent starts walking out the door, it's frequently a signal that the leadership above them isn't providing the vision, development, or operational environment that keeps ambitious people engaged.

Tracking exit interview data at the manager level will often tell you something important about the health of your Director-level leadership before those Directors themselves become a problem.

Warning Sign #4: Strategic Initiatives Keep Stalling

You've decided to expand capacity. Or implement a new ERP. Or push into a new customer channel. And six months later, the initiative is still in the planning phase, mired in internal debate, or simply hasn't received the sustained attention it needs.

Chronic strategic stall is almost always a leadership capacity problem. Either your senior team doesn't have the bandwidth to lead change alongside running the operation, or it doesn't have the specific capability the initiative requires — and nobody has named that gap out loud.

In either case, the answer isn't a better project plan. It's an honest assessment of whether you have the right leadership in place to execute the strategy you've set.

Warning Sign #5: Succession Is a Blank Page

Ask yourself: if your COO handed in their notice tomorrow, who would step up internally? If your Plant Director was headhunted next month, what's the plan?

If the answer is "we'd have to recruit externally" for every scenario, that's not a recruitment strategy — it's a vulnerability. Mid-market food manufacturers that rely entirely on external hiring for continuity are permanently one resignation away from an operational crisis.

Succession planning doesn't require a formal HR program. It requires knowing which roles carry the most key-person risk, having an honest view of internal readiness, and making deliberate decisions about where external talent needs to be brought in proactively — before the seat is empty.

Warning Sign #6: Your Leadership Team Looks the Same as It Did Five Years Ago

This one is subtle but important. Food manufacturing is changing faster than ever — automation, sustainability compliance, food safety regulations, shifting consumer demands, and increasing supply chain complexity are all reshaping what effective senior leadership looks like.

A leadership team that was right for your business in 2020 may not be the right team for where you're heading in 2027. That's not a criticism of the individuals. It's a recognition that businesses evolve, and leadership capability needs to evolve with them.

If your senior team hasn't changed in composition, capability, or mindset in several years, it's worth asking honestly: are they still the team to take the business to the next level?

Warning Sign #7: The CEO Is the De Facto COO

When the most senior operational decisions consistently land with the CEO because there isn't a Director-level leader capable or empowered to make them, the business has a structural problem. The CEO's time and attention are the scarcest resources in any mid-market company. When it's being consumed by operational management rather than strategic leadership, growth stalls.

This is one of the most common patterns I see in mid-market food manufacturing businesses that reach out about an executive search. The CEO is exhausted, the senior team isn't functioning at the level the business needs, and a single well-placed Director-level hire can fundamentally change the dynamic.

What to Do When You Spot These Signs

The first step is naming the problem honestly, which is harder than it sounds in a company where loyalty to long-standing team members is a genuine value.

The second step is distinguishing between a development problem and a hiring problem. Some leadership gaps can be closed with the right coaching, clearer accountability, and better structure. Others reflect a genuine ceiling on capability that development alone won't fix.

The third step is acting before urgency removes your options. The worst time to start a Director-level search is the week after a resignation letter lands on your desk. The best time is six months before you think you need to. The companies that build consistently strong leadership teams treat executive hiring as an ongoing strategic activity — not an emergency response.

A Final Thought

The early warning signs are rarely dramatic. They show up as friction, as slowness, as the same problems recurring without resolution. They're easy to rationalize away when the business is still hitting its numbers.

But in food manufacturing, where margins are tight, operations are complex, and the cost of leadership failure is measured in real production and commercial impact, waiting for a crisis to act is an expensive habit.

If any of the signals in this article feel familiar, it's worth having an honest conversation about what your senior team actually needs — and what it would take to build it.

Williams Recruitment specializes in Director-level and above executive search for US food manufacturers. To discuss a current or upcoming leadership challenge, book a 30-minute discovery call.