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Karen Benjack Glatzer is founder and President of GH Consulting, a leadership and executive development firm.
The newly hired executive is ready to start. The search firm has found a world-class talent and has partnered with the company to bring in an exceptional candidate. An incredible amount of time and resources have been spent on hiring this superstar. The senior management team is no longer going to have an empty seat at the table. The CEO is relieved that, after 4 months of a talent search, he will no longer have to operate without a CMO. The press releases are poised to hit the wires. The entire organization is anticipating even greater success as a result of this new hire that has an impeccable history and is known for delivering quick wins.
9 months later the management team is disappointed with the CMO and can no longer hide their frustration. The marketing organization is dramatically divided and the CEO, although liking the CMO personally, is thinking that a mistake was made.
Perhaps, a “mistake” was not made. The search firm clearly and accurately vetted this person; they went through all of the cultural and personality matching in addition to insuring business skills were A+. The hand-off was made and the candidate was clearly the right hire.
So what happened between the hire … and 9 months later?
Talented. Successful. Confident. Why does this happen?
From our vantage point, and in successfully partnering with many executive search firms and companies, we have learned that not enough thought and resource is applied to the person’s assimilation into a company. This is no one’s fault; it simply requires a re-visioning. A new way of thinking about a person’s first 9 months on the job, and not just the first several weeks.
Many organizations wrongly believe that once the hiring is done, it is up to the executive to find their way and perform right out of the gate. Basically, the executive gets air dropped into the organization. The stakes are so high that he or she immediately starts focusing on results, winning, reorganizing the department, and reinventing the strategy.
There are several things an organization can do to help their newly hired executives be more successful, more holistically, and more quickly. Having a strategic onboarding process also helps an organization avoid the extremely high costs associated with an executive’s departure.
These costs are now running, conservatively speaking at ten times the executive’s base salary.
Here are some suggestions to help a key hire – on any level in the organization --- have a broader base of support so they can create long-term, sustainable results:
Ongoing partnering with your search firms. Many search executives see themselves as ongoing consultants whose jobs do not end when they place an executive in your organization. Make sure you chose a search partner who understands how critical it is to help an executive settle into your company successfully. Many search firms work in partnership with consultants who have the talent, skill, and expertise to help with this transitional process.
Onboarding. Ensure, that in addition to an orientation process, the organization invests in an “assimilation or onboarding” process. This is best done by an outside consultant who can help the newly hired executives settle in quickly and effectively. This partner works one-on-one with the executive ensuring this newly hired executive understands the company culture, develops a leadership model that will work to enhance the organization, partners with his/her team systematically and intentionally, build bridges with peers, and manages upper management expectations. It sounds easy. It seems intuitive. And yet, due the fast, demanding pace of corporate life, most executives only concentrate on the business portion of the equation, forgetting that the cultural and leadership portion is critical.
Public Anointing. The new hire has to be publicly anointed by the CEO or his/her direct manager in a way that is ongoing and supportive. Appropriate communiqués must be distributed announcing the new hire. The manager must spend concentrated time with their new executive and must enthusiastically support them in public forums for the first several weeks of entry.
Align expectations. From the outset the new hire must completely understand the expectations of all critical stakeholders. This does not happen unless time is made for in-depth conversations, offsites, surveying the troops, and having one-on-one frequent check-ins with one’s new boss. This, and only this, allows a person to truly understand the subtle nuances along with the obvious norms that exist in all organizations. Without this full knowledge, even the most creative strategies can fail.
It is nearly impossible for executives to ensure they are doing all of these things if left to their own devices. It is more natural for newly hired executives to get caught up in the morass of demanding meetings, travel, forecasting, client demands, etc.
Therefore, we are finding that more and more newly hired executives are retaining a coach-consultant who specializes in onboarding to help them navigate the political and cultural landscape. This partner becomes a valued advisor and is often, accepted by the whole organization as someone who helps everyone be more successful.
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