Finding The Right CEO to Unlock Business Growth

Challenge

A multi-national company with a massive global footprint, generating revenues well over $1 billion and a workforce of 8,000 spread across six continents faced a crucial challenge when it came time to recruit a new Chief Executive Officer. Being a 55-year-old multinational enterprise with a tradition of promoting executives from within, the stakes were high as they sought fresh leadership to steer the organization in a new direction.

Despite the incumbent CEO’s thirty-year tenure in the company, and five years in the top job, it became apparent that the business needed a new approach. The organization had experienced rapid growth in the 2000s, but by 2014, that momentum had slowed considerably. The company had been hampered by a decentralized management model, which made it difficult for the senior leadership team to take coordinated action across the various business units. Moreover, the company’s ownership structure was unique because it was widely distributed amongst long-serving employees. While this had imbued the organization with high loyalty, it also led to unreasonable expectations from some members.

Yet, in many ways, the company was poised for success. More than a dozen of its customers rank among the Fortune 100, and more than one is listed in the Top 10. Beginning in 2010, the company had positioned itself as a leader in two segments undergoing rampant growth, although breakout success had yet to materialize.

The right CEO would be a key difference-maker with many challenges to overcome, such as establishing a unique vision, building and growing the team, managing a complex business model, and unifying the culture across many regions. The strategy would include expanding in emerging markets such as South America, Asia, and Africa. It would also entail pursuing alliances, joint ventures, and mergers or acquisitions with cooperative organizations in adjacent industries.

The new chief executive would need to inspire the firm’s leaders to take measured risks, pursue expanding markets, and hire best-in-class talent to help motivate excellence. He or she would need to drive culture change to support greater accountability, responsibility, and authority.

The Search Partner

Over the years, TRANSEARCH International has cultivated a relationship with the company’s Board of Directors. Despite the urgency, it took time for the organization to be comfortable hiring an outsider as CEO.

Once they decided, they assembled a selection committee, and TRANSEARCH was invited to present as a potential search partner. Among the six finalist search firms considered, TRANSEARCH was retained to recruit and evaluate internal and external candidates for the CEO role.

TRANSEARCH was selected due to its methodology for understanding an organization’s culture and articulating “fit,” in addition to industry experience and a measurement-driven recruiting process. The TRANSEARCH Orxestra© Method was the linchpin in defining the scope, strategy, and candidate evaluation criteria throughout the global search.

Solution

The Assessments

Before the kick-off meeting, TRANSEARCH issued several web-based assessments for each board member to complete:

1. The first one centered on culture
2. The second one focused on the team
3. And the third was a Hogan Assessment, which would help compare current board members’ personalities with each finalist CEO candidate during the search.

Once all together, TRANSEARCH melded group feedback with one-on-one sessions.

The Orxestra © Method

Adding greater context around the client’s advantages and blind spots, TRANSEARCH conducted Orxestra © with the board’s hiring committee:

1. First, TRANSEARCH established the performance scorecard as a list of eight critical leadership competencies and articulated the definition of success for each.
2. Second, TRANSEARCH determined the organization’s cultural framework by eliciting several shared experiences articulated in the form of stories.
3. Lastly, TRANSEARCH defined the critical elements of team fit that would be crucial for success in the CEO role.

The Process

With a validated recruiting strategy in hand and a compelling sense of what fit meant for this organization, the global search got off to a fast start. Within days, TRANSEARCH populated the long-list with targeted global candidates.

Within weeks, the project leaders interviewed dozens of the world’s most capable and relevant executives across the technical services domain. Nearly all of the individuals were passive candidates directly from the industry sector.

The Orxestra © tool and job scorecards established a clear baseline by which all prospective candidates were evaluated. Some factors applied to the search were:

• Prior CEO experience was welcomed but not required.
• Merger and acquisitions expertise, global leadership, and management experience were necessary.
• A key factor was a successful experience with a relevant scope of profit and loss and sustainable business expansion.
• Finally, it was important to exhibit an ability to manage international teams and leaders across various disciplines.

TRANSEARCH’s consultants’ team quickly generated a list of more than a dozen fully vetted external candidates.

Additionally, eight leaders already employed with the company were delicately evaluated for candidacy. These individuals ranged from Global Region Presidents to other C-level Officers, as well as Heads of Business Development around the world. Each internal candidate experienced a screening process identical to that of external candidates. The TRANSEARCH team took great care to respect each internal candidate’s engagement, interests, and reputation.

Throughout the search, all internal and external candidates received timely updates and were given constructive feedback if they were not selected to proceed.

Using a combination of reference inquiries, written question responses, and the Hogan Assessment tool, TRANSEARCH helped the client sort the long list of candidates down to a short list of five finalists.

Resumes, full profiles, compensation details, and more were packaged into candidate binders and delivered to the board’s hiring committee. In addition, TRANSEARCH provided a custom framework for interviewing candidates, including: highlighting accomplishments, career motivations, and topics needing further discussion.

Chris Swan and Dirk Stauthamer attended all in-person meetings, helping guide the dialogue and brief candidates before and after interviews.

Industry

AEC