01 Mar Executive Search: Ever-changing, never-changing! (Part 2)
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard
In part one of this series, we discussed how technology has put its foot down on the accelerator, sending the executive search business hurtling towards the future at warp speed. Beyond tech advances, our business has undergone a paradigm shift on several fronts. Longer-term vision and goals are married to short-to-midterm strategy.
Beyond the basics of specific steps, refined skills and trusting relationships and the human touch, executive search today embraces a whole new world. Here’s a glimpse at what executive search firms would do well to consider, when hiring leaders from a future perspective.
Trash legacy checklists:
Invent new ones. Businesses today are all about future-proofing teams. When clients posit a mandate, finding out their corporate goals for the next two years is critical. That gives you what you need to target suitable candidates with the right skills, attitude, roles and talent to fulfil the mandate.
Unconventional wisdom says the underlying concern is building a company instead of filling a role.
Teamwork makes the dream work:
Experience has taught us that it takes more than one person to steer a company through choppy times. Ask anybody from the C-suite, and they will, off the record, admit that the sheer demand for speed, creativity, and innovation today is more than any single individual can handle alone. Building symbiotic, multitalented teams with diverse perspectives is the way to go. ‘Together we stand’ has never rung truer. This approach to executive search is more like finding the missing puzzle piece than looking for a chess grandmaster.
Yesterday’s boulders are today’s road rumblers:
The pandemic has proved without doubt that all barriers can be broken, and they were. If it could be done then, it can be done now. Naysayers of this mantra will be left behind. Today, businesses are looking for leaders who will head to where they perceive the ball could land next rather than where it is now. Yesterday’s barriers are today’s road rumblers.
The future belongs to those who embrace it:
We’re truly living in revelatory times. When times got tough across businesses and leadership levels, the next generation of leaders rose to the challenge. History has long made us perceive that a proven track record is an excellent indicator of assured success. The focus is today on potential. Experience is great, but executive search professionals would do well to figure out the challenge-hungry, the initiative-takers, the out-of-the-box thinkers and the calculated risk drivers who demonstrated results. The ever-shifting landscape of executive search calls future leaders to drum up their own specific anthems, at the sound of which success will lie in recognising the potential of those who dare to wing their dreams.
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