CBA Recruitment 7200 The Quorum Oxford Business Park Oxford OX4 2JZ

Changing the Top Team - Electronics

The Client is an electronics manufacturer with operations and subsidiaries throughout North America as well as in Europe, SE Asia and Australia.  We had previously been involved in finding country managers for their French and Irish businesses as well as a Logistics Director and a Channel Manager in the UK. 

This gave us good links with the company's headquarters on the east coast of the USA and in particular with their Vice President of Operations for EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), so it was with personal as well as professional pleasure that we received his PA's call to ask if we would pick him up at Heathrow in two days, take him to his hotel and have dinner with him there.  Oh, and would we mind, just for the moment, saying nothing about his visit to the company's local managers?

We collected the VP - let's call him Ron, since that isn't his name - and drove him, together with the Vice President for Human Resources (we'll call her Lisa), to the Runnymede at Egham.  Ron planned to stay the night there before flying on to Rome the following morning - if it came out that he had been in Europe, a visit to his family roots in Italy was to be the cover story. 

Over dinner, Ron outlined his problem.  Recruitment is always about a problem, and the solution to the problem is always a person (or, sometimes, people).  Sometimes the problem is a good one to have - growing sales, new products to be launched, replacement for an internal promotion - and sometimes it isn't.  Ron's wasn't.

The company was unhappy with British sales.  Whatever measurement they used, performance lagged behind other markets for no identifiable external reason.  Lacking a European Head Office, it was down to Ron to do something about it.  He planned to return in two weeks time to confront the British country manager; before doing so, "I want my ducks in a row".  What that meant in practice was twofold: he needed to know how easily and how quickly we could find him a new country manager and, if necessary, other members of the top team; and Lisa needed to be certain that she absolutely understood the employment law implications.

The latter was reasonably straightforward - our Technical Director is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development with many years line management experience including having been HR Director of significant companies.  Kevin was able to tell Lisa what she needed to know and (as a back-up) to arrange a meeting the following day with a lawyer experienced in employment law.

On the face of it, the other question was also easy enough to answer.  Events of the past two years have produced a fair-sized pool of Managing Directors, Sales Directors, Marketing Directors and salespeople with electronics, IT and telecoms experience.  Finding names to put forward would not be difficult - if anything, the problem would be selecting from the great wealth of talent available those with the best fit against Ron's specific requirements.

If only life were so simple!  The past few years have seen a huge increase in the number of electronics, IT and telecoms companies in Europe and, therefore (since almost every company needs one of each) in the numbers of Managing Directors, Finance Directors, Operations Directors, Sales Directors and Marketing Directors.  An increase, that is, of people carrying those titles.  Unfortunately, the number of people whose performance in the job justifies their title has not kept pace. 

As it happens, the root of Ron's trouble lay in the fact that he had a British MD and a British Sales Director who weren't, really, quite good enough.  (I don't know whether the fact that we hadn't found either of those people was the reason Ron brought this assignment to us.  I preferred not to ask and he never said).  For another example of title outrunning performance, take a look at the article Inflated Expectations (and why you really do need a specialist headhunter) on our News & Views page.

In the end, Ron asked us to find him an interim MD who came in at two days notice on a three month contract.  Over the next two weeks, we carried out personality profiling and other assessments on the Sales Director and the two Regional Sales Managers the Sales Director had brought with him from a previous company.  At the same time, the interim MD made his own assessments.  The result: the Sales Director and both Regional Sales Managers were given tightly defined improvement targets to be met within a set time.  Crucially, they were also offered training and other assistance to help them reach the target.

As a one-time Sales Director, I found it a pleasure to watch one of the RSMs respond and meet his targets.  Sadly, we were asked to find a new sales Director and a new Sales Manager in addition to the new Managing Director who replaced the interim MD at the end of his contract.

So a major part of the top team was replaced by people who were properly assessed and selected and whose backgrounds were thoroughly probed.  Was it a success?  Well, that all happened fifteen months ago - and since then we have found the company two new sales managers and eight salespeople to keep pace with the growing business.  So, yes, I guess it was.