The Marquee Hire Is a Liability
Hire the biggest name. Put them at the top. Let the org form around them. For a long time that was the playbook, and for a long time it worked well enough to go unquestioned.
It does not work anymore.
When one name carries the organization, the organization carries one point of failure. The star leaves. The star burns out. The star was never quite the fit the deck promised. And the room that was built to orbit one person has no center left.
The room is the asset, not the name.
The strongest creative and commercial organizations are no longer assembled around a single marquee hire. They are built as benches. A set of operators who cover each other, who hold the standard between them, who do not collapse when one seat turns over.
That is a different kind of hire. Slower to admire. Faster to trust.
The brief has changed.
The brief is no longer fill the seat. It is assemble the room. Find the four who make each other better, not the one who makes the org dependent.
The market already knows this. The budgets have not caught up. The firms that move first on the bench build will spend the next cycle hiring the people the marquee chasers passed over.