Chief Executive Officer | Major Medical Company
Given the opportunity to search for a CEO who had considerable operations and transformation expertise, NGS Global provided a critical range of search, advisory, and assessment services.
Background
Our client was a large multinational medical device company, specializing in digital precison technology. The firm has numerous subsidiaries which include sales centers, manufacturing business centers, as well as service and repair facilities.
The Need
The CEO was retiring, and they were seeking an exceptional leader to take the firm into its next chapter. Their preference was to promote an internal candidate, however as part of their due diligence for such a pivotal role, they wanted to benchmark their preferred succession plan against the talent that was available from the broader market.
Our client was seeking a proven leader who had both a passion for and experience with leading a complex medical device firm. They were looking for a balanced yet visionary leader with an exceptional degree of analytical smarts and emotional intelligence. They also needed an executive search partner who would conduct the project while evaluating potential internal candidates within the firm.
Strategy and Approach
In order to effectively assess the candidates, we designed, developed and executed a thorough capability assessment program that provided detailed, comparative and quantitative insights into each shortlisted individual. This ‘unbiased’ the process, and gave additional insights into the behavioral traits and, if necessary, the development needs of the candidates.
Our assessment program included five key measures:
1) Psychometric Testing which provided us with valuable insights as to the personality profile of each candidate, which we then benchmarked against the personality fit desired by the client
2) 360 Survey which gave us a detailed understanding of how each candidate is perceived by subordinates, colleagues and superiors
3) Gap Analysis that mapped the differences between the self-perception of all the candidates as revealed by the Psychometric Test
4) Assessment Feedback Session with each candidate, delivered in the form of a positive and supportive training and development plan. During this assessment, we measured a range of soft skills for each participant, including how they reacted to constructive feedback.
5) Market Mapping Exercise which gave a detailed report of internal vs. external talent.
When the mapping was completed, there were some considerable advantages to selecting one of the internal candidates. As the client organization was a leader of the industry and also one of the largest, the internal candidates were familiar operating with best practices, and competent at running complex, multi-faceted business units. Moreover, they demonstrated an ability to ‘hit the ground running’, with their extremely intimate knowledge of, love for, and loyalty to the organization.
Based on this, the client chose to opt for the preferred internal candidate, with the proviso that they undergo a one-year coaching program to develop themselves in the development areas identified by us as part of their ‘induction’ as CEO. We designed the one-year development program, and recommended the coaches that would facilitate the new CEO’s development.
Our NGS Global Value-Add
• Partner-led search execution that helped identify relevant and highly-qualified external talent that were potentially suitable for the role.
• A comprehensive, unbiased and structured capability assessment methodology and framework that benchmarked internal candidates with the external talent pool.
• Provision of a one-year development program for the successful candidate, and a detailed talent market mapping report which profiled the top candidates potentially available.
Contact Fernando Zavala (Project Lead)
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