You Need a Leader--Now What?

Book excerpt: Solving the Leadership Jigsaw Puzzle You have a key leadership job to fill. You want the very best person. What exactly does this really mean? How often have you seen someone with great credentials and terrific buzz take an important job, but before long people are wondering “what exactly were we thinking?” Getting the best person is less about finding an individual superstar and more about deeply understanding what your organization needs, the kind of person who will fit into your culture and bring the right experience and skills to get the job done. Based on decades of experience at Spencer Stuart, the gold standard in executive search, Jim Citrin and Julie Daum cut through conventional wisdom and “rules of thumb,” whether the job that needs filling is that of CEO or a key leader in marketing, technology, finance, or human resources. • Landmark original research from the United States, the UK, Germany, France, and the Netherlands provides evidence for how an organization can diagnose its needs and decide on who is the right leader for a specific situation at a particular point in time, and whether an outsider or insider would best fit the bill. • Eye-opening case studies, including how the New York Public Library worked its way through the maze of pressures—rapidly changing technologies, diverse, demanding constituencies, changing demographics and economic forces—to find the president who could best carry on its mission in the twenty-first century; how Starwood Hotels assessed the value of experience versus potential in choosing a CEO; the person who failed in one circumstance but achieved extraordinary success in others. • Steering clear of the red herrings of age, experience, and ethnicity • Avoiding the biggest traps of leadership selection, such as “his charisma was intoxicating,” and “we thought we really knew him.” In a competitive environment as challenging as today’s, the one difference, as Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook notes, “Between companies that change the world and those that don’t is having the right people.” You Need a Leader—Now What? is the must-have guide for navigating the terrain.