Glass cliff or breakthrough: four questions that tell you which one you're looking at

The board chair gets in touch by phone on a Sunday. For six quarters the division has been in the red, the last two presidents were women, and both were gone within eighteen months. The job is yours if you want it: a larger title, a $90,000 raise, a place on the executive committee, and a charge that, read closely, says "fix what two people before you couldn't, with the same budget and the same board." You are 53. Five years of quiet preparation have brought you to this moment, and the reasons it is landing on you now are clear enough to you. The chair needs an answer by Friday, so that is when your decision is due.

Whether you have the skills for this role is not the real issue at stake. What matters is whether the role is a trap or a true opening, and seen from outside San Antonio, those two possibilities appear identical.

Option A: Accept it just as it stands.

Its risks are obvious enough. Should the division resist every effort, you end up as the third name in a row, and it is names in a row that people remember. Few organizations stop to wonder why three leaders in succession fell short. Instead they start looking for a fourth, and that person tends to arrive with more money and fewer restrictions than you were given. Russell Reynolds reported, from a modest sample worth reading as a hint rather than a verdict, that women CEOs held their posts for 5.2 years on average, while men held theirs for 8.1. Brief tenures start to resemble a pattern rather than bad luck.

Option B: Say no to the proposal.

Here, too, the drawbacks are equally clear. Jobs at this level don't surface every year, and "she passed on it" is a story that gets around quickly. You keep your record clean, but you may be giving up your one shot at proving you can run something that loses money. Sometimes a cliff is simply a cliff, with no hidden meaning. Other times it's the hard assignment nobody else wanted, and whoever takes it earns the credit.

Option C: Agree to it, but only if the conditions are ones you set.

Agree to the post, but attach conditions and get them committed to writing before you sign anything. A clear runway, a named board sponsor, a budget line that didn't exist for your predecessors, and an eighteen-month success measure that isn't just "profitable." The risk is that you may hear no, and a no to reasonable conditions is one of the most useful answers you'll get all year. Such a demand reveals whether they wanted a face for the office or an actual recovery.

What veteran executives tend to advise

Executives who have stepped into a cliff role and walked out still standing usually begin by asking four pointed questions.

Step 1. Why did the last two people leave, as they themselves describe it, rather than as the chair tells it? Call them. They will tell you.

Step 2. What has changed since then? If the honest answer points to you, treat it as praise and not as a strategy.

Step 3. Which board member will share responsibility for the result with you? Without a named person, no one will defend you when the first quarter underwhelms.

Step 4. At the eighteen-month mark, what would count as a win, spelled out in writing? Without that written measure, they cannot assess you fairly, though they will assess you regardless.

The decision

Your answer depends mostly on how you handle question one. If the previous two were set up to fail and only the title has been swapped, walk away, or keep negotiating until the setup changes. If the situation has genuinely shifted, sign on, with the agreement written down and a sponsor in place. Real breakthroughs can look like cliffs that happen to come with funding. Leaders in San Antonio's larger employers, from health care to energy to financial services, face this same choice, and the questions hold up wherever you work.

Your vote

If you were in this position, what would you choose? Your choices are to take it, refuse it, or take it on conditions you set. Vote below. We will publish the split next week, along with the question most of you said you'd ask first.