The Search That Should Never Have Started

Marion Heil
vor 3 Tagen
4 Min. Lesezeit

This is not about a difficult client. It is not about the challenge of finding the right candidates.

This is about a particular moment in an executive search engagement, somewhere in the first few conversations with a client.

Something in the conversations doesn't add up. The role description is vague in key aspects. The outgoing executive is spoken about in careful, hedged language. When you ask what success looks like in eighteen months, the answers are surprisingly generic for an otherwise sophisticated organization. And underneath it all, there is a faint sense that the expectation is for the new person to fix something that nobody has quite named yet. You can’t put your finger on it, but something is amiss.

This is the moment I want to talk about. Because in my experience, this may be the moment a search should pause, not begin.

Executive search is, at its core, a talent solution.

Executive search is, at its core, a talent solution. It works when the underlying problem is a talent problem. Place the right person in a clearly defined role, with the mandate and the conditions in place to succeed.

But organizations sometimes reach for a search when the problem is actually elsewhere.

But organizations sometimes reach for a search when the problem is actually elsewhere. The strategy is unresolved. The ownership structure is creating friction that no individual can overcome. The board and the management team have fundamentally different views of where the company should be going. The culture is consuming leaders faster than they can be replaced.

In these situations, bringing in a new executive is not a solution. It is a postponement.

In these situations, bringing in a new executive is not a solution. It is a postponement. The new person arrives with energy and goodwill, runs into the same structural wall their predecessor ran into, and either leaves or adapts by becoming something smaller than they were hired to be.

I have seen this pattern several times, and I consider it part of my job to name it when I see it. Not to refuse the work, but to be honest with the client before we (and they) invest months and lots of money in a process that is unlikely to deliver what they actually need.

Clients who have decided they need a search do not always want to hear that the search might be premature.

The conversation is not always welcome. Clients who have decided they need a search do not always want to hear that the search might be premature. But in my experience, the clients who can hear it, and who are willing to sit with the discomfort of that question for a moment, are almost always the ones whose searches ultimately succeed. Because they use that pause to get clearer on what they really need and what they are actually asking the new person to walk into.

Reasons might be manifold, but some signs worth paying attention to might be:

The role has been vacant for longer than the official explanation accounts for. Talented executives are rarely impossible to find when the conditions are attractive. If a role has been open for a year and previous approaches have not converted, the question is worth asking: is the problem the candidate pool, the approach, or the role itself?

Or the brief describes a transformation mandate without describing what transformation actually means in this context. "Drive change," "challenge the status quo," "bring a fresh perspective" are phrases that appear in briefs when the organization wants the comfort of change language without the disruption of actual change.

Or there is no internal candidate, and nobody seems to have asked why. Sometimes there genuinely isn't one, for various reasons. But sometimes the absence of an internal candidate reflects something about how the organization has developed, or failed to develop, its own people, and that pattern might not stop at the appointment of the new executive.

Or the success criteria shift a lot during the briefing process. A role that begins as a growth mandate may become a consolidation role by the third conversation. This means the organization is still working out what it wants, and the search has started ahead of that clarity.

None of this means the search should not happen. It means the search should happen on a foundation that gives the incoming executive a genuine chance.

None of this means the search should not happen. It means the search should happen on a foundation that gives the incoming executive a genuine chance. Our job is not just to find the right person. It is to make sure the right person is being asked to do something that the organization really needs, and that is actually possible.

That sometimes means slowing down before speeding up. Being clear in the beginning, in the long run, is almost always the best investment.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marion Heil is the founder and managing director of Board+CEO Advisors, a Vienna-based executive search and board advisory boutique. She advises listed companies, family businesses and investors on C-suite, leaders and supervisory board appointments across DACH and CEE.