Organizations driving change,managing through crisis, or holding course during a vacancy will often turn to the agility and expertise of an interim executive. It’s a career for the bold professional with deep skill and experience. BlueSteps is the executive career management service of the AESC. Glenda Brown, Managing Director of BlueSteps and Kathy Simmons, Executive Director of BlueSteps Career Services provide clarity, counsel and resources for BlueSteps members considering an interim executive career DEFINING THE INTERIM EXECUTIVE Just what is an interim executive? It’s a C-level professional who takes on a high-level mission in an organization and upon completion, moves to the next mission. “Think of the career as a serial executive,” Simmons says. Interim executives can have specialized strengths—turnarounds, mergers, launches, crisis management, diagnostics. They can take over leadership of a vacant role—a business unit, function or team—with little to no learning curve, while an organization completes a search for a permanent hire. “When there is upheaval in an organization it is imperative that the organization have superior talent to lead through its challenges,” Brown explains. “Often the solution for those types of situations is an interim executive who has the agility and ability to come in, boots on [...]

Corporations, non-profit organizations, public and private entities worldwide are beginning to explore the idea of the interim executive, and they are turning to AESC members for counsel and candidates. “The view of the interim role was once just about filling in a line role until the permanent person was hired, or helping clients cover a business-critical gap in their infrastructure. Now, it is very much about enabling transformation.” Tom Forrest, Managing Director, SH Consulting, Sheffield Haworth What’s Trending? Executive search and leadership consulting firms register growing interest in interim executive leadership from their clients and from candidates. Susan O’Hare, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is National Practice Leader at Gallagher Executive Search and Leadership Advisors, a US-based firm where she focuses on the healthcare sector. “We have already placed more interims in 2020 through the 1st of May than we did in all of 2019. So anecdotally, absolutely we see growth in the interim role. I participated in an AESC Boutique and Independent Firm Forum about a month ago, and there was interest among more firms in offering interim services because they have clients who are asking about it.” Research by executive search firm Ccentric Group confirms growing candidate interest. Sydney-based [...]

More and more frequently, our clients are asking us to go beyond the public domain when conducting background checks on executive and board candidates. While the intelligent search and analysis of public information is the foundation of background checking, some past controversies can only be found through interviews, especially interviews of former colleagues, who often have unique knowledge of a candidate’s personality, performance and character. We find these interviews helpful in identifying red flags — a valuable supplement to traditional searches such as criminal records, regulatory filings and social media. It can be useful to think of background checking as having two parts: searching the public record and interviewing. Each part is important, as even the most basic online checks can raise questions about a candidate. Here are a few recent examples from part one, public records and social media checks: Identity verification: The seemingly basic but critical step of confirming someone’s identity is not as easy as it may appear, and it should not be taken for granted. In one case, through comparative analysis of public filings, we found that a financial officer had conveniently borrowed an old friend’s date of birth on his job application; under his true [...]

In the second quarter of 2020, we have seen a global pandemic, historic rise in unemployment, and protests that began in the US have spread around the world. It is an understatement to call this a time of uncertainty! Is this any time to be talking about purpose? Purpose may be a luxury we cannot afford during a global crisis. Or it may be exactly what we need. STOCKHOLDER TO STAKEHOLDER The Business Roundtable startled many in August 2019 when it redefined the purpose of the corporation, moving away from shareholder primacy and toward promoting an economy that serves all stakeholders. Is this aspirational vision truly the future of corporations? For Eren Rosenfeld, Chief Human Capital Officer at Russell Reynolds and former Global Head of Talent Development at BlackRock, “I think the answer is yes. We’re seeing more and more companies turning toward this vision of sustainability. But there is a ‘rhetoric-reality’ gap. Over 90 percent of CEOs think their future success will be defined in some measure by how sustainable they are, but less than half are actually acting on it. Our new research with the UN Global Compact lays out exactly what it means to be a sustainable [...]

Remote Work in a COVID World The spread of COVID-19 and the consequent office closures and stay-at-home orders created a new world of work, with little warning. Executives and office workers have transitioned from corner offices to couches; cubicles to kitchen tables. What factors contributed to the successful transition, how can organizations sustain their cultures while social distancing, and where do we go from here? Alwin Brunner, CIO at Heidrick Struggles; Kathleen Fitzpatrick, CIO at Russell Reynolds Associates; and Brandon Johnson, CIO at Korn Ferry offer some answers, as well as additional questions leaders should consider as we move toward a post-COVID world. READY OR NOT! A report published in late April by Harvard Business Review looked at different countries’ state of readiness for remote work. Recognizing that moving to remote work requires adequate digital services, e-commerce, digital media and digital payment options, the report finds that “this crisis casts a spotlight on the gaps overall and unevenness of digital access,” and concludes an essential part of recovery “should involve the digital systems—the platforms, the digital payments, and the internet infrastructure—the lifelines during the period of socially distant work.” How did some AESC member organizations fare? "Heidrick & Struggles was [...]