CEO Executive Search
CEO Executive Search, Brisbane and South East Queensland
CEO appointments are less about finding the most impressive person and more about understanding what the business needs for its next chapter. A brilliant corporate CEO can be entirely wrong for a founder-led business, and the reverse is just as true.
What a Chief Executive Officer does in a mid-market business
A Chief Executive Officer sets direction, makes the decisions nobody else can make, and builds a leadership team that does not require them in every conversation. In founder-led, family owned and private equity-backed Queensland businesses, CEO search is usually driven by succession, a transaction, or a shift in what the business is trying to become.
The trigger
When founders and boards hire a CEO
The founder is ready to step back
The hardest and most common trigger. The business needs a leader, and the founder needs to still recognise the company in two years.
A transaction has changed the search
New shareholders, a new hold period, a new plan. Frequently the incumbent is excellent at the previous chapter and not the next one.
The board is carrying too much of the strategy
When directors are doing the thinking rather than testing it, the executive role is not filled properly.
Growth has stalled without an obvious cause
No single failure, just an absence of clarity. That is almost always a leadership question.
The assessment
What a strong CEO appointment looks like
- 01
Creates clarity. Most businesses do not lack effort, they lack an agreed definition of what matters this year.
- 02
Makes decisions and lives with them publicly.
- 03
Builds a leadership team good enough that the CEO is not the bottleneck in every meeting.
- 04
Has operated at comparable scale and complexity, and understands the difference between a resourced corporate and a business where you are the resource.
- 05
Chemistry with the board and shareholders. It matters far more than any job description acknowledges.
CEO compensation in South East Queensland
Total package ranges drawn from our own Queensland search data, reviewed quarterly. Equity, options and carried interest sit outside these figures unless noted.
CEO, founder-led, $20M to $50M revenue
Total package. Frequently includes a profit share or equity path.
$300,000 to $420,000
CEO, family owned, $50M to $150M revenue
Base plus short-term incentive, with governance obligations to a family board.
$400,000 to $550,000
CEO, private equity-backed
Base plus incentive plus meaningful equity tied to the exit outcome.
$450,000 to $700,000+
Interim or executive chair
Used to stabilise a business while a permanent search runs.
$2,500 to $4,000 per day
Ranges come from our Queensland search data, reviewed quarterly. Total packages exclude equity, options and carried interest unless noted.
The Queensland market
What we see in the CEO market here
The best CEO candidates in this market are rarely looking. Every serious CEO search we run is worked by approach, not by advertisement, and the timelines reflect that.
Corporate to founder-led is the transition that fails most often, and it almost never fails on capability. It fails on pace, on resourcing, and on how decisions actually get made in a business where the owner is in the building.
Succession searches carry a second search inside them. Defining the founder's ongoing role is usually harder than finding the candidate, and getting it wrong undoes an otherwise good appointment within eighteen months.
Questions we are asked
CEO hiring questions, answered
First profiles land within seven business days, but a complete CEO search generally runs ten to sixteen weeks from briefing to signed offer. The strongest candidates are in role and need time, and the board process itself typically adds two to three weeks that most timelines forget to include.
Run both properly. Benchmarking an internal candidate against the external market is the fairest thing you can do for them, and it is the only way a board can be confident in either outcome. What damages people is a search where the internal candidate is a formality.
Our South East Queensland data shows CEO packages from $300,000 to $420,000 in founder-led businesses of $20M to $50M revenue, $400,000 to $550,000 in larger family owned businesses, and $450,000 to $700,000 and above in private equity-backed businesses where equity forms a significant part of the outcome.
Yes, and most of them are. Where an incumbent is still in role we manage the market approach and the internal narrative so nothing moves until the board decides it should. Confidential search is the default in this discipline rather than the exception.
Your next executive appointment
Related disciplines
CEO appointments by sector