You have worked for this. The title. The seat at the table. The moment when your name is the one they call. And when it finally comes, it deserves more than excitement. It deserves scrutiny.
There is a well-documented pattern in corporate America called the glass cliff. You already know the glass ceiling — the invisible barrier that keeps women from reaching the top. The glass cliff is what happens after she breaks through. Research analyzing more than 26,000 executive appointments found that companies in crisis are approximately 50 percent more likely to appoint a female executive than companies that are performing well. The reasoning is rarely about her qualifications. It is about optics. She signals change. She absorbs risk. And if things go wrong, the bias is confirmed. If things go right, the credit is shared.
The pattern is not hypothetical. Anne Mulcahy inherited $17 billion in debt and an SEC investigation when she became CEO of Xerox in 2001. She saved the company over five years and handed it to Ursula Burns — the first Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 — who stepped in just as the digital revolution was dismantling the print industry. Both women delivered under conditions designed for failure. Both are studied in business schools today. And both were handed fires they did not start.
More recently, we have seen this play out at Boeing, Walgreens, and across the retail sector. Women are being elevated into the highest-risk roles at an accelerating pace. In the current economic climate — with layoffs spreading and companies restructuring publicly — that pace is only increasing.
So, what should an ambitious woman do with this information?
First, learn to read the room before you accept the offer. Watch for senior departures with no explanation. Pay attention to budget freezes that do not match the company’s public story. Notice when the reorganization chart changes more than once in a year. Feel the urgency of how the offer is delivered. A healthy company gives you time to decide. A desperate one needs you to decide by Friday.
Second, protect yourself financially before you begin. Negotiate severance in writing before day one — the standard is one to two weeks per year of service, with executive roles warranting six months to a full year. Understand your equity, ask what it was worth two years ago versus today, and know that vesting schedules run on the company’s timeline, not yours. Get budget authority and team resources defined in the offer letter. And ask the company to define what success looks like in eighteen months before you sign.
None of this means you avoid the hard assignment. It means you walk into it the way every woman who went before you deserved to — prepared, protected, and clear on what you are stepping into.
The door is open. Go through it with your eyes open too.