David Wexler
The Business of HR
Difficult Economic Times Call For Greater “ROI”, Where ROI = Return On Imagination
Over my career, I’ve had the pleasure of working with highly intelligent, thoughtful, and committed leaders at all levels of the organization. I’d be hard-pressed in fact, to think of a time over the past 30 years, when I’ve worked with individuals who were not so. Why then is it that in some of the organizations, most of these, leading Fortune 500 Companies, the Companies consistently did well and over-achieved vs. plan on revenues and operating profits, regardless of economic and competitive conditions, while others did not? There are many reasons including leadership vision and courage and financial backing from stakeholders. One not often cited, and perhaps equally important though is an environment conducive for unleashing employee imagination…
Pierre Robitaille
2.0 Leaders
Rewards menu for 2.0 Leaders
Often leaders tell me that they want to have more rewards in their repertoire to drive employee performance, especially the emerging talent in the 25-35 year old demographic, but they operate in a resource constrained environment. They don’t have enough resources to reward people…
Robert Hebert
The Talent Jungle
The Benefits of Knowing your Reputation
Reputations are built over time, easily damaged and difficult to mend. A great reputation yields an army of volunteers happy to speak glowingly on someone’s behalf. A poor reputation can sideline an executive forever. And while we may all long for sparkling reputations most of us have the odd performance smudge, strategic disagreement, business failure, cultural or job misalignment, or even misconduct that is mashed together with our victories to create the individuals we are. How do others see this amalgam that is you?...
David Wexler
The Business of HR
“Say On Pay”...the conundrum that Boards face
One can’t seemingly open a newspaper these days, without reading somewhere about alleged or real executive compensation excess. Given the meltdown in asset values over the past 3 quarters, investors and investor advocacy groups have cited the current disconnect between management pay-outs and shareholder returns as grounds for calling for non-binding shareholder votes on executive compensation…
Pierre Robitaille
2.0 Leaders
Surplus of labour, but not of talent
Even with the current economic challenges, we are on the brink of a major war for talent, as many organizations that rely on knowledge workers already know. Today, there may be a surplus of labour, but not of talent. Over the next 10 years who will fill the management spots being vacated?...
Mark MacLeod
The CFOs Corner
Some suggestions for Canadian VC
For the 2nd time in a week, I read a pretty negative article about the Canadian VC industry. The latest being the Financial Post reporting on Canadian VC investment hitting a six year low. I’ve posted on Canadian VC returns in the past. The numbers speak for themselves and are not great…
Robert Hebert
The Talent Jungle
Why Your Reputation Matters
Headhunters are paid to find candidates who will thrive in their client organizations. Certainty is elusive so the promise of success is always weighed against the probability of failure. Risk is the key variable to be controlled…
Francis Moran
In the Media
Advertising is dead. Long live advertising
I had lunch last week with a new colleague with whom I am just beginning a collaboration. He strikes me as a highly creative guy, and he runs what, in this social-media age, might be called a traditional advertising agency. So when we began to talk about the impact that new social-media tools are having on our collective industry, I was interested to hear his perspective…
David Wexler
The Business of HR
The Art Of Sourcing Great Senior Level Talent
As President and/or CEO, you know that a key ingredient in the successful execution of your vision and strategy is having the right leaders in place. How you go about acquiring this critical talent, and how you select from the pool of potential hires thus takes on even greater importance at times when you often already have too many things on the go. What should you do? Well, in my experience, leaders handle this in (at least) three different ways: 1. They stretch out the hiring process, thereby potentially harming the business (through less than optimal leadership of the function affected, an inability to tackle time-sensitive opportunities in the marketplace, and the loss of star candidates who have other offers on the go). 2. They short-change the hiring process by cutting out important steps, thereby risking hiring the second or third best candidate (and potentially creating longer-term harm for the organization). 3. They work backwards, from a time they want the leader in place, and partner effectively to have a process that achieves this goal. Let’s take a look at this third approach, in terms of 10 steps to help CEOs acquire great senior level talent.
Robert Hebert
The Talent Jungle
Why some executives are simply more effective
Recently I was asked to interview several candidates competing for a senior management role. The company in question had acquired several firms and was looking to align the disparate, distributed and increasingly dysfunctional engineering teams behind a common direction and leader…