Guide For Search Committees
We use our Results-Based Hiring® framework to help you hire a CEO who can drive the specific impact you need. Beyond the hire, we offer structured transition support and performance management consulting to create a foundation for long-term success.
We’ve achieved a 100% retention rate for our top executive placements in associations over the past eight years and maintain a near-perfect record with nonprofit executive director hires. We partner with organizations with budgets from $2.5MM to $40MM and a range of governance models, including federated structures.
Our competency-driven approach is designed to adapt to the rapidly changing world of work. We begin by assessing your organization’s current strengths, challenges, and strategic goals. From there, we develop a customized recruiting strategy to identify and attract candidates uniquely qualified to drive future success.
We take the time to understand the full context of your organization, not just the job description. We talk to senior staff, board members, the outgoing or interim executive, and leaders of peer organizations to surface the challenges and opportunities your next CEO or executive director will need to navigate.
We distill these findings into a briefing that helps your search committee align on what success looks like. Clients have used this analysis to restructure governance or rethink the scope of the leadership role itself. It’s common for committees to tell us, “This is what we wish we had when we developed our strategic plan.”
We believe that a search consultant should serve as your partner in risk management. Our role is to equip your search committee with the decision-support, data, and structure needed to hire a a new leader who can usher in years of progress. We identify the most qualified, mission-aligned candidates from diverse backgrounds, ensuring your organization benefits from a wide range of perspectives and experiences.
Our top executive searches are not one-off transactions. Many of our clients retain us for multiple senior-level searches after a CEO or executive director placement. Because we approach our work with a long-term partnership mindset, we offer transition guidance, onboarding support, and performance management consulting for up to two years.
We work with the outgoing executive to outline their day-to-day work, identify current strategic challenges or issues, detail their relationships with staff and external partners, and surface any other information that will support the leadership transition. We distill this information into a debrief document for the board and the new executive.
With board approval, we debrief the new executive with key insights from the transition document. This valuable information helps the new CEO understand the organization’s unique challenges, opportunities, and expectations, enabling them to prioritize their efforts and make high impact decisions from the start.
As a neutral third party, we are a trusted moderator between your board and the new executive. We have guided both parties throughout the search process and can help focus attention on key issues early on.
We also offer strategic guidance on staff structure and team changes. With our experience in job design and organizational structure, we can help assess team dynamics and align staff roles with the new leader’s strategic direction.
At the nine-month milestone, we can assist in evaluating the new CEO’s performance and setting expectations aligned with immediate achievements and long-term strategic plans. During the one-year performance review, we can offer insight into the progress of your new leader’s transition, emphasizing the continuous alignment of leadership actions and strategic goals.