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After months of rigorous searching, youve found your ideal executive candidate. They tick every box on paper and seem perfect in interviews. But then reality hits: Your Cinderella candidate isnt prepared for the real-world challenges of the role. Now what? A popular study highlights just how commonand costlythis scenario is. A 2015 research report from Corporate Executive Board found that 50% to 70% of leadership hires fail within 18 months. And that can cost the company one-half to twice the hires annual salary, according to a 2019 Gallup report. Given the high levels of remuneration, the financial impact can be even more severe at the executive level. As someone who has navigated countless executive searches, Ive seen how easy it is to fall into the trap of searching for a Cinderella candidatesomeone who appears to match a meticulously defined set of qualifications perfectly. And even if the ideal candidate does exist, they may not be interested in your opportunity or ready for a career move. Compounding these challenges, you have noncompete agreements that further shrink the available talent pool. Setting the ideal candidate bar high can help, but an overly rigid vision often results in a long, drawn-out search with diminishing returns. When we accept that perfection on paper rarely translates into perfection in practice, we create opportunities to find strong candidates who bring real, tangible strengths to the table, even if they dont check every box. To find the right hire and mitigate leadership turnover, we must rethink how we define, evaluate, and select leadership candidates. The following insights will help broaden your approach: 1. The right leader is a catalyst, not a title Rather than locking into overly specific C-suite qualifications, consider the characteristics of transformational leaders that your team genuinely needs. While technical skills matter, you should emphasize broader competencies like adaptability, decision-making in ambiguity, and the ability to motivate diverse teams. These qualities often predict long-term success better than niche expertise. Consider leaders with transferable skills. They can bring fresh insights and a broader understanding of how to drive success in evolving environments. To implement this shift in your recruitment strategy, broaden your search criteria. Identify three competencies that you need to navigate the companys evolving needs, and build the ideal candidate profile around them. Instead of seeking candidates with narrow expertise, look for ones who have thrived in roles requiring agility, like leading R&D initiatives or driving organizational change amid disruption. This approach allows you to attract versatile leaders who are ready to innovate and guide your organization through periods of uncertainty and change. 2. Culture isnt one size fits all To achieve a balance in hiring for cultural fit versus hiring for skills, employ structured assessments that translate fit into measurable attributes. Tools like DISC profiles or situational interviews provide concrete data on qualities such as empathy, resilience, and adaptability, allowing hiring teams to evaluate whether candidates align with company culture in objective terms. This avoids the common pitfalls of hiring based on intuition alone and helps avoid overreliance on subjective notions of the perfect candidate. For senior leadership roles like COOs, scenario-based interviews should focus on how candidates have successfully navigated complex challenges related to people, processes, and change management. Ask how theyve implemented large-scale organizational changes or optimized operations to drive efficiency. These structured assessments reveal a candidates approach to strategic problem-solving and their leadership style. In turn, this ensures they can align with the companys vision and foster a high-performing culture. 3. Cross-functional input is key When creating an ideal candidate profile for a role that requires strong cross-departmental collaboration, include perspectives from various departments in the hiring process, such as finance, HR, operations, and product development. By aligning on core characteristics of leaders who inspire and unify, hiring managers gain a comprehensive view of each candidates potential impact across teams. For instance, used vehicle retailer CarMax involves leaders from product management, engineering, and customer experience to evaluate candidates for roles within its technology and innovation teams. Each team member provides insights into collaborative skills that they need for meeting customer needs and delivering fast solutions across functions. Utilizing these teams in the hiring process helps ensure that selected leaders can build relationships, bridge departmental divides, and facilitate cohesive, organization-wide success. 4. The perfect candidate is a myth The perfect candidate is a myth that often leads hiring managers to overlook leaders with qualities like resilience and learning agility. In executive hiring, finding the right cultural fit often outweighs industry expertise alone. Sure, technical knowledge is essential, and you can use that for a candidate in the room. But ultimately, you should make sure that the candidate aligns with the companys values, vision, and culture. Leaders who seamlessly align with the companys culture tend to engage teams more effectively, navigate challenges agilely, and drive change in ways that feel authentic to the organization. A high-performing C-suite hinges less on perfect matches than on leaders who can innovate within an evolving landscape. Hiring for sustainable success requires shifting from rigid, idealized profiles to assessing candidates for resilience, adaptability, and alignment with the core values of the organization.
Category:
E-Commerce
Warren Buffett is likely the best-known, most successful investor in the world today. The philanthropist and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has an estimated net worth of $158 billion and is known as the Oracle of Omaha for his ability to pick long-term investments. Hes also dedicated to sharing his wisdom with everyday investors, including beginners. Here are Buffetts top three tips: Principle No. 1: Invest Only in What You Understand Buffett has famously advised, Never invest in a business you cannot understand. In a letter to Berkshire Hathaways shareholders in 1996, Buffett explained the concept of a circle of competence: Basically, these are the fields that you truly understand and are knowledgeable enough to evaluate. You don’t have to be an expert on every company, or even many, Buffett said. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital. For example, Buffett famously stayed out of tech stocks early on because he felt he couldnt truly evaluate the investment opportunities himself. At a 2019 stockholders meeting, Buffett advised investors to try and learn as much as they can about as many businesses as possible and then figure out which ones they truly understand and have knowledge on. That, he said, would put them ahead of most other investors. If youre an investor whod like to build your own portfolio, sticking to what you know is vital. Youll be able to evaluate each business for yourself and understand the true relevance of new developments over time. Meanwhile, if youre investing in something just because someone else says its a good idea, youre entirely dependent on their judgment, which may not be as sound as they claim or believe it is. If you dont have the time or inclination to study individual businesses thoroughly enough to make these judgments for yourself, Buffett recommends investing in an S&P 500 index fund as the best option for most investors. Principle No. 2: Avoid Unnecessary Activity You dont get paid for activity, you only get paid for being right, Buffett said in 1998. Especially as a beginning investor, youll likely get the urge to react to news about the market or your individual investments immediately. Its easy to panic when an earnings announcement sends the value of your equity down 5% or more in a day. But Buffett preaches patience: If youve done your due diligence and youre investing only in stocks you have strong reason to believe will pay off in the long run, a little market noise along the way shouldnt scare you off. Inactivity strikes us as intelligent behavior,” he said in his 1996 letter. If youre sure youre investing only in strong, well-managed businesses, then you need to trade only when those qualities arent true anymore. Stocks and the market tend to grow in value over time. By trading too frequently, you may find yourself reinvesting in stocks at higher prices than you originally bought them atlosing out on gains, dividend payments, and any trading fees in the processor losing out on higher long-term profits. Principle No. 3: Make Every Investment Decision Count In a speech at the USC Marshall School of Business in 1994, Charlie Munger, cofounder of Berkshire Hathaway, said that Buffett believes most investors would be better off in the long run if he could give each one a ticket with only 20 slots . . . representing all the investments that you got to make in a lifetime. The root of this advice is the same as Buffetts other investing principles: A limit of 20 investments forces you to carefully consider every move, to be patient, and to not invest in businesses you dont understand. Youd also ensure youre confident enough about each investment that its worth missing out on another investment in the future. Think about it: If you were buying a house or a car, would you buy it sight unseen, without an inspection, or on the word of some random person online? Probably not. Your investments deserve nearly as much deliberation. Buffett said in 1996 that every investors goal should simply be to purchase stocks in businesses that they are virtually certain will be earning more money in 5, 10, or 20 years. This diligence and patience has made Buffett one of the richest men in the world and could help your portfolio as well.
Category:
E-Commerce
As the founder of a high-growth SaaS business, Evan was the quintessential entrepreneur. Ideas and innovation were his strength, and they led to his success in attracting investors and inspiring his early hires. With the infusion of investment capital, the company entered a new stage of growth. To scale successfully, the business needed to standardize operations and develop repeatable processes to reliably deliver services to its customers. But these were not Evans strengths. With a near-constant flow of ideas and a desire to resource them, he soon earned a new nickname among his team: chief distraction officer. Eventually, investors grew tired of Evans lack of focus and replaced him with a seasoned operator who had the operational capabilities necessary to grow. The skills that make founders successful often become liabilities as a business builds. As executive coach Marshall Goldsmith says, What got you here wont get you there. Here are five leadership behaviors that break at scaleand where the fixes lie. 1. Creativity over Discipline Evan was a perfect example of someone whose creativity and passion were a perfect fit for a founder. As his business progressed to the next stage of growth, the primary skill required was the ability to build out processes, to systematize the product so that it would be delivered to clients consistently every time. But highly entrepreneurial leaders often find it draining to limit their focus to only the one or two proven products. Whats the solution for the mismatch of a founders talents to this later stage of growth? The most successful ones recognize new skills are needed, have the humility to accept their own limitations, find a great COO, and get out of that persons way. 2. High Appetite for Risk When starting out, its important to take risks, try new things, learn from your mistakes, and try again. As companies scale, though, the focus should turn to building stability and predictability. Sudden shifts in strategy and focus cause uncertainty and inconsistency, which erode the trust and confidence of customers, employees, and investors. How do leaders balance the need for continuous innovation with stability and predictability? Former Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg offer a great framework for continuing to innovate as you scale: the 70/20/10 rule. The idea calls for allocating 70% of capital to the core business, 20% to emerging products and services, and 10% to the cutting-edge, higher-risk ideas. This framework ensures that innovation is always happeningbut not at the expense of the core business. 3. Command-and-Control Leadership Founders are notorious for having their hands in every decision, from product development and pricing to the paint color of the office. As the company scales, this level of involvement is no longer possible. Founders have to bring on new leaders to mobilize, motivate, and manage a larger number of employees. But bringing in leaders is the easy part: Moving to distributed leadership, where the company is truly led by a team instead of an individual, is harder. Distributed leadership calls for founder CEOs to step out of the day-to-day operational decisions, delegate, trust, and empower those on their team to drive results. Allowing others to share the management responsibilities pays enormous dividends. Beside the obvioushaving others to lean on for their knowledge and expertiseit also helps to ensure the stability and continuity of the business. Only by distributing leadership will CEOs be able to elevate their role to focus more on leading strategy. 4. Open-Door Communication Early-stage leaders enjoy the close proximity of their team and the ability to communicate in real time. It can be really challenging for CEOs to break the habit of communicating informally and directly with everyone at the company. To scale successfully, a CEO needs to shift to more measured and intentional communication. As Google was growing rapidly in the early 2000s, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin faced the challenge of shifting from being player-coaches who shared an office with fellow software engineers to becoming key executives of a publicly traded company. To help themand their employeesenforce new and necessary boundaries, the two hired a key executive assistant. That new hire served as a filter for their email and a bouncer for their office, with their role empowered to moderate the flow of people in and out so the executives could be more disciplined with their time and focus. 5. Valuing Relationships over Accountability A key ingredient to building a successful company is a high-performing teamand most startups dont begin with one. Founder CEOs often describe their initial team as a family who have bonded with each other through the intense challenges of the startup experience. Sometimes, early employees are actual familysiblings, spouses, and children are often part of the act, bringing all of their relationship dynamics with them. High-performing teams, by contrast, run on accountability. Those who are not able to deliver the required results wont make it, regardless of their relationship to the founder. Adding accountability structures like job descriptions, goal-setting, and performance management helps to ensure the team is on track to execute. These processes also help to shine a light on anyone who is unable to adapt to the new demands of the larger and more complex organization. Inevitably, founders will be forced to make some difficult decisions regarding some of the early team members to make way for new talent who can drive results and take the business to the next level. Building a sustainable, stable growth engine with double-digit year-over-year growth is hard. Each new stage of growth brings new challenges that require a different set of skills. The most successful leaders are those who understand the need to adapt their behaviors to meet the next stageand what it demands.
Category:
E-Commerce
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