Articles & News
Articles
Happy Thanksgiving! Lessons We Can Learn from Myles Standish
Overcoming hardships and appreciating our successes–this characterizes 2021. Lessons learned from Myles Standish and Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Are You Paying for Non-Performance?
When we consider the measure of leadership’s worth, the current structure for corporate compensation is a very curious matter.
Three Key Attributes of Great Leaders Part Three: Knowledge
There are many ways to assess the leadership qualities we seek for business, politics, sports or communities. In this article, we’ll address the third—knowledge.
Three Key Attributes of Great Leaders Part Two: Skills
There are many ways to assess the leadership qualities we seek for business, politics, sports or communities. In this article, we’ll address the second—skills.
Three Key Attributes of Great Leaders Part One: Attitude
There are countless ways to assess the leadership qualities we seek for business, politics, sports or our own communities. Recognizing an individual’s ability to assess leaders is an essential proficiency for leaders themselves. In this article, we’ll address the first—attitude.
Reflection on a Trojan Horse: Why the Yahoo! CEO Debacle Was Important
Learning from the still-relevant lesson of a Yahoo! case study: Hiring a “Trojan horse” in your company can cost you everything!
180% Penalty: The Monumental Costs of a Bad Leadership Hire
Can your business afford to make a bad hire? There are some leadership selection process miscues that could wind up costing your business up to 180% of annualized salary, and that’s a figure no one wants on the books.
Company Culture: Why You Should Care
Whether you can explain it or not, when it comes to hiring a new executive, if it doesn’t feel like the right cultural fit: don’t ignore it; don’t think you can fix it; don’t do it!
We Need to Stop Treating Our Employees Like Employees
We have a lot to learn from leaders who attract, deploy and retain great people – without paying them. Just talk to any seasoned, non-profit executive (or Director of Volunteers), and take a page from their playbook.
What Could Go Wrong? Part 3: “Spiking the Ball on the Five-yard Line”
This is Part Three, the final of a three-part series that documents recruiting errors reported by business leaders we interviewed across a wide variety of industries.
What Could Go Wrong? Part 2: “Great Athlete, Wrong Game”
This is Part Two of a three-part series that documents recruiting errors reported by business leaders we interviewed across a wide variety of industries.
What Could Go Wrong? Part 1: “The Thrill of the Hunt”
This is Part One of a three-part series that documents recruiting errors reported by business leaders we interviewed across a wide variety of industries.
What Could Go Wrong When Hiring Leaders? Three common themes for business leaders
We interviewed 20 leaders* who acknowledged that their next failed hire won’t be their first. As C-level executives, business owners, corporate recruiters and consultants, they all know the right steps to find great new leaders. Revisiting their own recruiting missteps was not comfortable, but it certainly is instructive. Here are the common threads.
You Want Me To Do What? “Repatriation” in the post-Covid workplace
How do you “repatriate” employees in the post-COVID era when working remotely has become the routine?
The Current Climate Spurs Us to Turn Threats Into Opportunities
How can we turn threats into opportunities? Lessons from the pandemic.
Business Owners Look Around the Corner. What’s Looking Back?
Strategic business owners know where they want to go. But as they look around that next corner, even their best planning won’t always prepare them for what may be looking back at them.
How to Attract Senior-Level Candidates
How do you attract and retain the best senior-level candidates? Here are some tips.
Securing the Right Leaders: You can afford them
Every business owner knows that they can’t have a first-tier company with second-tier leaders. In response, one of the most frequently asked questions is, “How can we afford them?” More on point, how do the better businesses attract and keep the leaders they need to be industry front-runners? Here’s a strategy.
You Can Find the Talent You Need
It is a candidates’ market. The economy is driving business growth and attendant hiring. The house of cards created by filling each opening drives another two to three turnovers in sequential back-fills. Add the extraordinary bubble of 10,000 daily retirees, and the competition to fill the burgeoning openings this has created is staggering. How do you keep up with competitors to fill these positions?
Where Has All the Talent Gone?
During a roundtable we worked with a group of business executives to understand and challenge businesses’ most critical issue: Where has all the talent gone?
I Trust You!
“If people like you they’ll listen to you. But if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” (Zig Ziglar) How are you building trust?
Great Companies Deliver the Unexpected
Inspirational speakers have a gift. They leave us with the hope that we will be able to take just a small piece of what they have delivered and implement it in our daily lives or business model. How do we go about that?
Assemble a Leadership Team During a Rapid Growth Phase
It is the double-edged sword – your company is growing, however, your leadership team is not yet in place and you are forced to take your eyes off of the demands of the company to build your A team. You are not alone.
What to Do When Facing Uncertainty
by Greg Mickelson, Principal, Standish Executive Search --- Have you ever been confronted with a problem that literally threatened to sink your business, burdening you with so much uncertainty that you did not know where to start? I remember one such situation...
Set Up for Failure, How Did They Succeed?
by Stanley H. Davis, Principal, Standish Executive Search --- In 1973 the New York Mets gathered a team of underperformers. This was a team that generated the second worst batting average in the major leagues. This was a team that finished ninth in games won. But this...
Algorithm v. Methodology: The value of retaining an executive search firm
Online job search tools and sites are a fundamentally flawed way to conduct a search for the perfect executive candidate who will be the exact right fit for your company and culture, and who will produce the value that you expect from this high-level addition to your team. The methodology of an experienced executive search firm will provide the best results.
The Worst Lies Are the Lies We Tell Ourselves
The lies we tell ourselves solely to help us feel OK about maintaining the status quo, not rocking the boat, or avoiding discomfort can be self-destructive. In this context they simply allow us to succumb to inertia – “the tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.” How can we recognize and change this mindset?
The Huge Idle Asset
An impressive golf score by a single player will be eclipsed by the score earned by a team in a best ball tournament. This impact of collaboration is understood by golfers. Can businesses similarly leverage the talents of their leaders to get the most of their human capital investment?
Every successful leader knows their industry, operation and strategy. But most miss a huge idled asset – collaboration.
Collaboration is not a matter of science, technology, finance, or business acumen. It’s a function of culture..
Union or No Union?
Unions have worked to provide enlightenment and social legislation to make U.S. businesses better places to work. Ongoing legal actions, legislative proposals, and bluster all challenge the status quo that labor and management would both like to change. But there is another point of view, as illustrated by these straightforward answers to often misunderstood (or misrepresented) aspects of the issue:
Is It Too Late To Make A Change?
In March of 2020 – just one year ago, our lives changed. Borders closed, stores closed, restaurants closed their doors with some keeping their take-out windows open and business – well…some thrived and some faltered.
We remember where we were when we got the news. My husband and I had just arrived for a three-week vacation in a Hilton Head condo on the beach. It was a short vacation – the beach closed, the pools closed, the restaurants closed and there was just a scant number of open grocery stores.
Facing Uncertainty
Have you ever been confronted with a problem that literally threatened to sink your business, burdening you with so much uncertainty that you did not know where to start?
I remember one such situation particularly well. I was given the opportunity to jump from running 2 businesses to all 6 businesses of a company after the responsible VP/GM was suddenly terminated. The owner of the company looked at me and said, “It’s all yours. Fix it”.
Your Best Employee Is Leaving
Your best employee just accepted a new job. If you can’t reverse this loss (and maybe you shouldn’t try), how do you avoid the next one – and there will be a next one. To complicate what may be next, we’re now in an environment where job security is more uncertain and people are more receptive to job alternatives. Plus we’re early in a new year which is an annual venue for elevated turnover.
Leadership in a Crisis and Beyond
COVID-19 caused many businesses to feel as if they ran straight into a stone wall at full speed. The economy was rolling along, unemployment was low, and there was a sense of optimism.
In an instant, everything changed. We have lived through a few months of the pandemic, but business leaders are concerned about their companies long-term. This is a new, uncertain environment.
The Guts and Resolve to Defy a Recession
In 2020 we’re looking into our next recession. From 2008 – 2010, we saw the courage and tenacity of one business owner demonstrate that you can survive and even reposition a company during extreme adversity. As we look back at the fear and pain of that Great Recession, it left us a legacy of one New England business leader on how to deal with extreme economic challenge – like we now face again.
Do You Have The Right Ingredients To Build a Great Leadership Team?
A natural instinct for some CEOs may be to bring in the people they know well and with whom they feel the most comfortable working. This may be a good place to start, especially if they have had success with these people in the past. It is important to ask yourself: Is this or was this the right approach?
Big Wave Thinking
Growing up as a kid on California beaches, I wasn’t a great surfer. In fact, I was goofy-footed. This term means that I stood on my surfboard with my left foot in back, which is opposite of most surfers who put their right foot in back.
Creating a workforce culture that retains your best and brightest
By now we have all flipped the calendar to 2019, worked through most of those lingering e-mails from the end of December and might have peaked at our year-end investment balances following the holiday rollercoaster stock market ride.
Millennials Come to Your Business – What Should You Do?
Much has been written about the Millennial generation – born between 1982 and 2004 – in an effort to understand (more)
Keeping the Talent You’ve Got!
The market for great talent has become very tight. Companies in a hiring mode are solidly in the hunt. (more)
Would you like to make sure your next executive leadership hire supports your company’s growth?
We call this step “the big transition point.” It is that seminal moment in the life of a business when a missed opportunity is limiting growth.
180% Penalty: Monumental Costs of a Bad Leadership Hire
Can your business afford to make a bad hire? There are some leadership selection process miscues that could wind up costing your business up to 180% of annualized salary…(more)
Leadership: The Key to Succession Planning and Creating Value
Do you have a solid plan to transition your business?
It’s a question that most business owners and senior executives have heard at some point during their career..(more)
The Keystone for Successful Baby Boomer Succession
If you are or have been the parent of a teenage child you may have read the book by Anthony E. Wolfe, I Hate You, But Will You Please Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall? You probably got a chuckle out of the title, but after reading it, found it totally relatable.
A Succession Case Study
Three years ago, Malcolm Cooper Jr., second-generation owner of J.K. Adams Company, made a serious assessment of future leadership prospects at his Vermont-based company.
What Happens When the Track Outruns Your Horse?
As businesses mature and position for growth, change or succession, the people who had been good leaders may still be good leaders. But as you look ahead they may no longer be the right leaders.
News
The Worst Lies Are the Lies We Tell Ourselves
The lies we tell ourselves solely to help us feel OK about maintaining the status quo, not rocking the boat, or avoiding discomfort can be self-destructive. In this context they simply allow us to succumb to inertia – “the tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.” How can we recognize and change this mindset?
Standish Executive Search Helping Cannabis Industry to Secure Leadership Talent
The region’s budding cannabis industry faces unprecedented leadership challenges as it grows in the widening acceptance and increasing appetite for medical and recreational cannabis.
Standish Executive Search Announces Worcester, MA Opening
To better serve central Massachusetts companies that are seeking the right leaders for their changing businesses, Standish Executive Search has established a presence in Worcester.
Company Culture is about organizational genes, not blue jeans
When companies are searching for new talent, the words “company culture” are regularly used in the body of a job description.
Beyond the resume – recruiting the right leaders for your company
Almost every organization is hungry to find the “right talent” when growing its management team. Hiring is challenging and stressful…
Howes Lubricator Welcomes New VP of Marketing
To better serve companies in Northern New England that are seeking the right leaders for their business, Standish Executive Search has established…
Standish Executive Search Now in New Hampshire
To better serve companies in Northern New England that are seeking the right leaders for their business, Standish Executive Search has established…
Standish Executive Search Finds Change Agent for Killeen Manufacturing and Security Products
Top Job: Identifying ways to impact business results based on company’s reputation for quality Worcester, Massachusetts – David F. Snelling of Spencer, Massachusetts has been selected …
Standish Executive Search, a Founding Member and Sponsor of The Business Value Forum
As part of its mission to help small and medium sized business position themselves for growth, Standish Executive Search is pleased to announce it is a founding member and sponsor of The Business Value Forum.
The Business Value Forum, Inc. is a non-profit (non-membership) organization created to provide business owners, leaders and advisors with unique educational and connecting opportunities to help develop, grow and sustain organization value.
Standish Executive Search
is a proud sponsor of
The Business Value Forum