The Talent Conundrum

The Talent Conundrum
By Brian Anderson BA Search Group

That the quality of management determines the success of an organization is a truism. But in the modern world the realization and assessment of management quality has become a critical challenge for Chief Executives and Boards of Directors who are ultimately responsible for getting it right.
What does attracting, retaining and developing executive talent involve and what tools are there to help an organization maximize its potential in this critical area.

Although much will depend upon the organization’s own vision, reputation and potential, consulting services such as retained executive search are available to maximize an organization’s possibility of success in the talent marketplace. Working effectively with executive search consultants can contribute to a comprehensive talent management strategy even though the real commitment to the strategy must come from the top of the organization.

Some leading CEOs consider that they spend as much as 50% of their time on key personnel issues. Assessing and counseling the C-level suite of officers, identifying and evaluating fast track internal talent, ensuring that a compelling recruitment proposition exists for outside hires, developing a positive culture that rewards achievement and raises the performance level of the organization. Many of these challenges will depend for their success upon the leadership qualities of the CEO – it is he or she who has the success of the organization in the palm of their hand. But they will not achieve success unless they work through other key executives – and it is the quality and motivation of those executives that is crucial.

With luck, foresight and good management excellent executives can be grown from within an organization. But there is too much change, too many variables at work in the market and within an organization to assume that all will go according to plan and that outside hires at senior levels will never be needed. There are some who would even maintain that, however good your own organization is at growing from within, a healthy and perhaps liberal injection of outside talent is crucial if the organization is not to become self satisfied and moribund.

So, how can executive search consultants help? What is it that they can bring to the table that is unlikely to be achieved by an organization on its own? And how should an organization work with a search firm to realize the hoped for benefits of an external hire, given the risks and costs involved in the process?

Brian Anderson is the principal founder of BA Search Group an executive search, coaching and consulting practice in the Naperville, Aurora, IL market.
www.basearchgroup.com, Brian@basearchgroup.com