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Greetings from CarterBaldwin, and welcome to Spotlight on Search, our quarterly e-newsletter.
The Executive Search industry continues to see robust growth even though there have been areas in the economy (mortgage and housing industries) that have struggled in 2007. In Q2, 2007 global industry revenues increased by 20%, as compared to the same period the previous year, according to the latest quarterly AESC State of the Executive Search Industry Report. The industries that saw the strongest growth were the Non-Profit, Industrial, and Life Sciences/Healthcare sectors.
I hope you enjoy the two articles that we in this quarter’s newsletter. The first is from the Harvard Business Review and continues to shed light on Executive Women in the workplace. This is quite timely given the recent Newsweek Cover Story “Women & Power” (Oct. 15, 2007 issue) which highlights further topics on this matter. Our second article discusses the importance of successfully positioning and transitioning a new Executive on to your team through the “on-boarding” process. We hope that you find these articles of interest and offer some insight into your business.
We appreciate your continued interest in CarterBaldwin, and wish you a great 4th quarter!
Jennifer Poole Sobocinski
Managing Partner
jsobo@carterbaldwin.com
By Alice H. Eagly; Linda L. Carli Pascale: Harvard Business Review
Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership
Two decades ago, people began using the "glass ceiling" catchphrase to describe organizations failure to promote women into top leadership roles. Eagly and Carli, of Northwestern University and Wellesley College, argue in this article (based on a forthcoming book from Harvard Business School Press) that the metaphor has outlived its usefulness. In fact, it leads managers to overlook interventions that would attack the problem at its roots, wherever it occurs. A labyrinth is a more fitting image to help organizations understand and address the obstacles to women’s progress. Rather than depicting just one absolute barrier at the penultimate stage of a distinguished career, a labyrinth conveys the complexity and variety of challenges that can appear along the way. Passage through a labyrinth requires persistence, awareness of one’s progress, and a careful analysis of the puzzles that lie ahead. Routes to the center exist but are full of twists and turns, both expected and unexpected. Vestiges of prejudice against women, issues of leadership style and authenticity, and family responsibilities are just a few of the challenges. For instance, married mothers now devote even more time to primary child care per week than they did in earlier generations (12.9 hours of close interaction versus 10.6), despite the fact that fathers, too, put in a lot more hours than they used to (6.5 versus 2.6). Pressures for intensive parenting and the increasing demands of most high-level careers have left women with very little time to socialize with colleagues and build professional networks–that is, to accumulate the social capital that is essential to managers who want to move up. The remedies proposed--such as changing the long-hours culture, using open-recruitment tools, and preparing women for line management with appropriately demanding assignments–are wide ranging, but together they have a chance of achieving leadership equity in our time.
By Karen Benjack Glatzer
Hiring is Just the Beginning: How to Insure The “Right” Hire gets off on the Right Foot
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.
