With so many businesses looking to hit the ground running in the 1st Quarter of this new year, amidst turbulent economic conditions, starting with the right people in place can deliver the advantage required to move ahead of the competition.
Banister International, under the leadership of Managing Director Melanie Wilson, recently completed a significant project to do just this for a key client.
An operating company of a private equity-backed organization, the client is positioned for significant growth over the next two years. Amid a very positive change agenda they required new general management (GM) leadership to support the planned business expansion. We were engaged to research a very specific employment market, identify key players, and qualify them for the opportunities in an expedited manner.
A unique approach delivers
Banister International’s philosophy of our Managing Director being hands-on enabled us to fulfil the clients’ very specific Search requirements. Working closely with the client, Wilson clearly defined the GM role profile so that we could hit the ground running and efficiently target the right cohort of candidates. Once we had alignment on the role profile, we deployed our research team to identify those companies with a pool of highly qualified GM talent.
The role required a very specific knowledge of the market, clients, and most importantly experience of leading teams of up to 1,000 employees. The client preferred candidates with local geographic knowledge and relationships, which added a level of complexity to the searches.
“This project was successful because the partnership was based in trusting each other and the process. The client understood that this was going to be an iterative, evolutionary process to get to the core of what skills, behaviors and experiences were necessary to be successful in this role. The clarity that was obtained during the first search fueled the accelerated placement of the remaining roles.”
-Melanie Wilson, Managing Director
Our experience has shown us that the market for GM capabilities presents some very clear challenges. Our research tells us that investment in the development of these skills has diminished over the past thirty years. The focus for a growing number of employers has been the creation of functional expertise, meaning there‘s no longer the investment in broader leadership training needed for these roles. Organizations, and functions within these organizations have become siloed, resulting in fewer developmental leadership roles available.
This, coupled with the volatility of the employment market over the past couple of decades, has driven behaviors where leaders “circle the wagons” and hold on to their best talent. The concept of being a Talent Exporter hasn’t received the accolades needed to promote the behavior of moving your best talent around an organization. This makes sense, as losing team members and employees who are making moves is perceived to hold greater risk. The lack of internal movement for developmental reasons has been reduced in this new market.
These factors have prompted high-achieving individuals to make career moves to other organizations in search of growth, development, and advancement. While these moves were often to promotional roles, they were typically in the same functional areas. The task of developing a pool of candidates to fit the bill proved to be an exciting challenge for our client – a challenge that we were able to solve for them.
Delivering quality, speed & execution
Banister’s extensive expertise working in the private equity world positioned us to deliver these 4 hires based on our research capabilities, market knowledge, hands-on assessment experience, and commitment to our values of quality, speed, and execution at the core of the project.
This project focused on ensuring all stakeholders experienced a process that focused on setting clear expectations and delivering on those commitments.
In addition to delivering outstanding results, we also learned a very specific knowledge of the General Management employment market, especially for a growth-oriented industry.
Get in touch if you would like to hear more about this project and how it might support your business growth.