Retained mandates align incentives with outcome quality. Contingency models optimise for activity — which rarely matches the risk profile of leadership decisions at scale.
Why Retained Search Outperforms Contingency Every Time
A practitioner brief on the economics of retained leadership mandates.
Practitioner Brief · 8 min
Published March 2026
|By TalentCaravan
About TalentCaravan
TalentCaravan advises founders, boards, and leadership teams at organizational inflection points where leadership decisions shape the next phase of scale.
Primary areas include executive search, fractional leadership, and institutional talent advisory.