| Recent and Current Searches |
CFO for an all-suites West Coast hotel company
CEO for a hospitality related company
Board Member for a private family entertainment company
CFO search for a California university
EVP/COO search for an East Coast hotel company
CEO search for an international ministry in Colorado
Head of School for a new prep school |
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| Staying Put Award |
In 1993, our firm found a General Manager for one of the most special little resorts in the country, the Alisal Guest Ranch & Resort (www.Alisal.com), which is located an hour’s drive north of Santa Barbara. Located in the hills just south of Solvang and near the Santa Ynez Valley wineries, this small resort, with only 73 guest units, has 10,000 acres, two golf courses, a 100 acre lake (Laura Dingman once caught a three pound bass off the dock…it was delicious!), tennis, petting zoo, Olympic-size swimming pool, horse back riding and great food. While there are no telephones or televisions in the guest rooms, there are wireless connections throughout and a television in the club house. The resort is a wonderful place for a quiet getaway or a family vacation.
A Cornell hotel school graduate, Dave was earlier with Hyatt Hotels. Dave has been doing a great job for Alisal and the owners, The Jacksons, for 13 years. Our congratulations to David Lautensack!
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| Book Reports |
The Complete Guide to Family Health, Nutrition and Fitness by Dr. Paul Reisser
The Complete Guide to Family Health, Nutrition and Fitness by Dr. Paul Reisser (published by Tyndale House), which was released a couple months ago, is a reference tool needed in each home. I may be biased (as Dr. Reisser is my personal physician), but this is really an excellent book. Over the years, Dr. Reisser has written numerous books covering subjects such as chronic fatigue, childcare, menopause, alternative medicine, sensible weight loss, healthy eating, etc. Those would fit the needs of a single focus, but the newest book is a must-have, complete reference guide for the entire family. Reviewed by Bruce Dingman |
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Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore
While this book is unabashedly geared toward the high tech industry, entrepreneurs in general, and anyone engaged in bringing forward innovative products, services or ideas will probably find value here. Derived from an industry that is a “microcosm of larger industrial trends,” the marketing strategies are relevant to almost any organization that seeks to create or increase demand for what it sells.
As a recognized “high tech guru” and principal of The Chasm Group, Geoffrey Moore speaks from a clear vantage point, presenting tested insights into the problems and dangers facing growing high tech companies and offering a blueprint for survival.
This book requires careful, but not arduous, reading. Brilliant analogies, dry humor, accessible examples and lucid explanations help to drive home the concepts. You will probably be challenged to rethink how you define your market (or target audience) and how to expand your company’s presence in that marketplace. One key concept is that the way you market your product to win early acceptance will be vastly different from how you market that same product to cross the chasm to the mainstream market. Pay close attention to Chapter 3 where Moore uses the analogy of D Day to suggest the essence of a successful strategy: "Concentrate an overwhelmingly superior force on a highly focused target" to secure the beachhead and expand from there. This brilliant chapter alone makes the book worthwhile. Reviewed by Donna White
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| Our People |
Bruce Dingman
President
Donna White
Vice President
Tim Bernstein
Associate
Patti Schultz
Office Manager
Allison Lindauer
Admin Support
Connie Schuh
Bookkeeper |
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| Feature
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| Healthy Conflict, Healthy Teams by Guest Columnist Nancy Ortberg |
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“We never run into any tension, it’s just that we aren’t moving forward.” It was a telling comment. My initial phone contact with this potential client had ended with this summary. He had lead with a significant discussion of his team’s obstacles and issues in the workplace, and finished his description with a sentence that summed up the exact problem in many companies today.
He meant the first part of that sentence as a compliment. But actually the seeming company harmony was the symptom that described their stagnation. The truth is that healthy, high performing teams must, on a regular basis, engage in what Patrick Lencioni (author, Five Dysfunctions of a Team) refers to as “passionate, unfiltered debate.” Conflict is a necessary and important part of great teamwork.
Think about it. Your organization depends on great decisions, stellar implementation and complete “buy-in.” Without these three things, you aren’t positioned to get the results you are working so hard for—and you aren’t building a cohesive leadership team. Healthy conflict, therefore, is the precursor to these three things.
One of your primary jobs as a leader is to create a culture that fosters this kind of animated, interactive and engaged discussion. But this can seem counter intuitive to many of us. Our unease with tension and our anxious attempts to move past it, become obstacles to the very thing we need to encourage in our organizations. If you’ve ever made a comment like “we don’t have time for this, we just need to make a decision and move on” …you may be avoiding the very thing that will energize your team. Intel has coined a great phrase that they not only practice, but also teach in each new employee orientation class: “Disagree and commit.”
Without this culture that encourages healthy conflict, creativity and motivation are abandoned. In our rush to make decisions, we short-circuit the process, leaving many great ideas and opinions unspoken. Not only have we failed to unearth contrary strategies, we have also left the very people responsible for implementation only partially committed. A leadership conference I went to at Harley-Davidson calls this “malicious compliance.” Isn’t that a great phrase? You can picture the smiling, nodding face on the outside, and the shaking head, rolling eyes on the inside—we’ve all done it at one time or another. “Malicious compliance” accurately describes what so stealthily siphons off great energy that ought to be going into the forward thinking implementation of the decisions we come to as a team.
So what’s a leader to do? First, understand that in order for you as a leader to create an energetic, creative culture, YOU have to be very comfortable with conflict. You bring a certain style of conflict resolution to work with you and much of it has roots in the home you grew up in. Take a look at your family of origin; was it a place of passivity and conflict-avoidance? Or was it more aggressive and attacking? In order for your team to be comfortable with healthy discussion, tension and conflict, you need to be leading the way.
Second, know that your role as the leader is to demand debate. Tell your team that you want candid deliberation (and if you don’t, revisit the first point). Communicate that it’s more than okay—in fact, it’s healthy—when they engage in this kind of debate. Great leadership wants passionate, strong leaders at every level in an organization. So encourage your team meetings to be places of animated debate in order to get to the kind of commitment that drives decisions to great implementation. Remember it will take time to move a team away from artificial harmony. Give your people permission to do it poorly in order to do it well.
And finally, celebrate when the passionate debate produces terrific results. Give both verbal and tangible rewards to teams that have the courage to disagree and commit. In addition to great results, you will also experience healthier teams. And that is a dynamic combination!
Nancy Ortberg is a founding partner of Teamworx2, a leadership consulting and coaching firm in Westlake Village and Menlo Park. Teamworx2 is an affiliate of Patrick Lencioni’s Table Group. |
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| Common Interview Mistakes by Candidates |
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Oftentimes excellent candidates needlessly blow their chances for being hired because of their actions in the employer interview. The recruiter’s exhaustive interviewing and reference checks are for naught if the candidate doesn’t act wisely. Here’s what to avoid:
Verbosity: Talking too much. Perhaps it’s the person’s usual style, perhaps they’re nervous or maybe they’re just trying too hard to make a favorable impression. Whatever the case, the employer will sense this personality type… and avoid hiring an anxious employee. So it’s best to be relaxed and articulate, not too brief and yet not verbose either.
Ill Prepared: Not doing homework on the company, the superior, the position or the organization’s market can come across as indifference, overconfidence or a lack of strategy. In one case, during a presidential search for a national association, a candidate was a former congressman with charisma and class. He was doing well in the interview until the search committee asked what questions he had for them. And he had none. They viewed him as being extremely superficial and not strategic.
Misunderstanding the Audience: Misinterpreting the style of the employer. In another situation, the organization was located in a semi-rural area of a southern state, thus the people had a somewhat laidback style. Sharp people, but just relaxed. One of the candidates presented, who was working in New York City, came in using his customary aggressive, very confident style and thus came across much too strong. He seemed too insensitive a personality to fit what the board was looking for. If the candidate had adjusted his style to his audience then he would have made the right impression and had a far greater chance of being hired.
While we feel a candidate presented would be an excellent choice for the position, we don’t “set up” candidates for the interview for fear the client won’t see their true personality or management style. Rather, the candidate must be astute enough (as we hope is typically their style in workplace relationships) not to make blunders during the interview.
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| The Ethic of Serving the Client’s Best Interests: The Dilemma in Serving Two Masters at the Same Time |
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When a search firm presents the same candidate at the same time to more than one client, this is referred to as “parallel processing.” Likewise, if the search firm has a candidate who might be excellent for one client but withholds consideration of him or her in order to present the candidate to another client, how is the search firm acting in the best interest of both clients?
These practices occur commonly in larger search firms where multiple consultants may have similar search requirements or in firms that principally work in one industry or function.
Why should a client care about these practices? It might mean that the candidate that you want to hire suddenly becomes unavailable because he or she “has just taken a job.” And you may not know it was the search firm you hired to fill your position that just played a role in that person taking another position.
We choose to avoid these problems. We do not take on two searches seeking simultaneously the same type of candidate. Recently we were doing a presidential search for one organization when another approached us to also find a president for them. These two firms were peer organizations. Since the second company had flexibility, they’ve hired us to undertake their search when the first client’s search is finished.
Serving the best interest of all our clients is supreme. We may lose some assignments but we know it’s the right thing to do. |
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| Building Support Within the Organization for the Search and the New Hire |
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Part of making the right match between a candidate and an organization requires the recruiter’s familiarity with the management style, the corporate culture and the personalities on the team. But there is also another excellent reason for the recruiter to get to know the players: The people on the existing team must feel included in the transition process so they’ll be supportive of the person selected. It can take just a few days for us to develop internal support for the search and selection process, and it’s a very valuable thing to do.
First, we gain insights into the professionalism, abilities and personality of the peers and subordinates of this position, which helps us to choose someone who’d be a better fit with the team. We also come to better understand the corporate culture through communicating with other employees. The culture may be somewhat different than the superior hiring us had suggested—especially concerning collaboration, effectiveness, and team unity. We may find unique characteristics within the organization through this discovery process above and beyond the CEO’s description.
Second, the peers and subordinates will feel valued if the recruiter asks them for their input. It is important to pay attention to co-workers’ hopes for the new hire and value their description (without attribution) of the organization’s management style.
And finally, since they were included in the process from the very beginning, and gave their input before the search was done, subordinates are much more likely to be supportive of the person hired. Without such involvement, some people might tend to withhold support for the person, often taking a “wait and see” approach to the new hire’s performance.
When we spend time individually with the peers and direct reports, we typically cover four points: What would you like to see in this person? What should we know about the job, the organization or the team? What would you like to know about the search, vetting and selection process? And do you have any names to suggest?
In organizations where a Search Committee makes the hiring decision, using this approach is crucial. But even in the business world where the CEO has the final say, building support within the organization is a wise decision.We’d welcome any reader’s thoughts on this subject. Maybe you’ll give us a new perspective or a better idea for supporting new hires. We want to keep improving our craft so welcome your thoughts. |
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