Joel Koblentz of Morgan Howard is a friend of the firm and insighful in key trends in acquiring and retaining top leadership talent. Thought this may be of interest to you. Best, David

From: Joel Koblentz
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 1:10 PM
Subject: Spring 2007 Client Letter

Dear Clients and Friends of Morgan Howard:
As we enter the second quarter of 2007, several trends that we highlighted in our prior letters remain evident and even more prevalent and a new trend is emerging which we believe will significantly impact attracting and retaining leadership capital.

• The accelerated velocity of executive “musical chairs” driven by a short-term orientation continues as boards demand heightened performance from their managements and as private equity lures away talented executives. As we have experienced in our engagements, operating and financial executives remain in high demand. There is a distinct shift toward executives who can raise the revenue line and those who can direct strategy toward higher valuation. With these market conditions, compensation for these executives is now moving upwards.

• Members of corporate boards are turning over at an unforeseen pace. We have advised our clients to search for a diverse set of competencies to govern their enterprises. As potential board candidates, current Chief Executives are seen as less attractive as they do not have the time, inclination, nor in some cases, the permission of their own boards to serve.

• Among our multinational clients, there is an unprecedented demand for globally-oriented leaders for assignments in Asia, especially in China and India, who are ethnically Asian. Frankly, there is a true shortage of qualified candidates in country for these high impact roles, and companies are actively pursuing the high-performing returnee. Individuals today who possess the experience, relevant market knowledge and leadership competencies are on high cost expatriate packages. And while their respective companies recognize the value of “true impact executives” and also know the time and cost that it will entail to replace such an executive if he/she departs, they are in a conundrum as they seek solutions which will allow them to phase out the expatriates with locals. As a result, to attract the returnees and locals alike, many companies are ratcheting up short-term compensation, promising more corporate visibility and career upside. Given our work, we can state that there are few “bargains” in attracting local or returnee “A” players to multinational companies in Asia today.

When we, at Morgan Howard, are engaged by clients with such requirements, we advise that thoughtful planning about the role under consideration is the key to attracting these rare, highly talented executives in markets where such talent is in short supply. Our experience suggests that being clear and concise with flexibility on compensation and location allows us to bring forward only the best qualified individuals for our clients’ consideration.

• A new trend in leadership is emerging. As rapid change continues, driven by market considerations and supported by technology, we have noticed that corporate culture appears to matter less than even two years ago. Our empirical observation is based on increasingly short-term orientation of business, the norm of turnover of top leadership, and a higher bar being set for short-term performance which, if unmet, leads to negative equity market reaction, pressure on the boards (as cited above) and a continuing cycle of meeting timely quantity revenue and net income targets.

Impact level searches for clients now tend to place competency and a track record of achieving rapid results over general experience, strategy development or specific functional expertise. The operative words are, “can this individual take us to the ‘promised land’ with real haste, with efficiency and without corporate accoutrements?”

The “of-the-moment” orientation now appears to be inculcated into the thinking of virtually every board and corporate leader. Every acquisition, product or service introduction or innovation must be quickly accretive. The company executive who holds the key to its history or corporate culture is now much less valued. And, this trend of “betting the company” for heightened valuation is rapidly becoming de rigueur. The truest benchmark for most of our clients is performance….quarterly results.

Recruiting senior executives in this era requires the type of efficient and effective talent evaluation and search process that we at Morgan Howard have utilized for many years. With corporate cultures in flux, we focus on candidates’ competencies and results.

Do you have a Cool Hunter on staff? – Madison Avenue has created a new role – that of a cool hunter. These are 19 to 30 year-olds whose sole mission is to scan the blogs, nightclubs, podcasts, and social networking sites in an effort for companies to keep their finger on the pulse of that generation (something that is nearly impossible for the “suits” to do, who sit on many corporate boards today with cobwebs hanging from the sleeves). Should your business have cool hunters? Click here to read this month’s newsletter – BTW, click here to subscribe and not miss future issues…

IN THIS ISSUE:

When It’s Broken At The Top
If you are a senior executive and your relationships, mutual trust (and we define trust as credibility + empathy), and respect for your senior team is broken, questioned, and in short, dysfunctional, what kind of effect does it have on the rest of the organization?

What’s Your Perceived Limit?
What perceived limits are keeping us back in our respective functions, performance, and strategic relationships each and every day? Which jobs are we afraid of taking on? Which challenging current or perspective clients are we perceiving to be simply too difficult? Which corporate or team-based goals seem so insurmountable to cause trepidation and worse yet, fear of trying for each of us?

The Tail Wagging The Dog
In response to a recent CIO magazine article about Sheppard Mullin, an AmLaw 100 firm with offices throughout California, installing an Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM) system – Personal, functional, and strategic relationships critical to cross-selling to various practice competencies within a law firm will heavily depend on the systematic, disciplined, consistent and quantifiable manner in which individual attorneys develop and nurture those relationships. Not a Knowledge Management (KM) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) like failure in many organizations!

Sidebar: Need Your Help!
In the February 2007 newsletter, I asked the question, “What Are You Working on BIG?” Many have replied asking about my efforts to change the lives of 5000 kids over the next 10 years. At The Nour Group, we’re focusing our time and efforts on The Bridge Soccer for Success program – working with kids who are without role models, direction, or hope. Click here to learn more about how you can help make a difference in the lives of these kids!

Gotta See This – April 11th WIT Keynote & Workshop
Are you LinkedIn? Do you Plaxo Spoke or ZoomInfo? Social Networking Tools are changing the landscape of traditional Business to Business interaction. You don’t want to miss David Nour’s presentation on Wednesday, April 11th on Technology Enablers for Strategic Relationship Success at the Women In Technology’s Creative Leadership Series. Click here to register. You can’t make the event or want a copy of the presentation material? Click here for the DVD, Booklet or Streaming Video

Demystifying The Brand Communication
I recently heard John Hackett, CMO of Coca-Cola North America, speak intelligently about the evolution of branding. He said that it will no longer suffice to just get your name out. Instead, the various stakeholders need to know who you are and what you stand for. Specifically, he mentioned four critical components in brand communication: Brand Positioning, Brand Idea, Creative Idea, and Brand Voice.

No Email Fridays! Give Me a Break…
Q – I recently saw a great article about No Email Fridays! What do you think?
A – It’s a band-aid! Guess what, the email usage spiked on Thursdays and again on Mondays! 

Q – I recently saw a great article about No Email Fridays!  What do you think?
A – It’s a band-aid!  Guess what, the email usage spiked on Thursdays and again on Mondays!
Background – a local CEO was frustrated that his employees were emailing each other, cc’ing 15 people on the most minuet points (sound familiar?) more often than they were talking or meeting live!  As such, he instituted a “No Email Fridays” policy where people were literally not allowed to send emails to each other on Fridays.  Here is why I think it’s shortsighted and a band-aid.

1. Intent – Robert Putnam’s best selling book, Bowling Alone does a great job of reiterating the point that we’re loosing our ability to touch people!  We’re becoming increasingly disconnected and there is a dramatic erosion in our sense of community.  That’s true in our neighborhoods as it is in our offices.  Email in particular has become so prevalent in our lives that we seem to not be able to live without it – I get 175+/day, and that’s after 4 spam filters.
   

2. The Problem – telling people not to send emails on Fridays is like me telling my kids don’t eat ice cream at nights!  As I mentioned above, the email usage actually spiked on Thursday afternoons and resumed on Mondays!!  The cause in this case is not the email – it’s simply a tool to further manifest the problem.  The problem is either the lack of willingness or ability (both culturally driven) to communicate.  Most people cc’ 15 people on any given email to cover their behinds!  Most people don’t start their emails with “No Reply Necessary” or “Reply to Sender Only Please”.
   

3. The Solution – only a change in behavior will create a lasting impact in the culture and in the business overall.  Create an environment conducive to collaboration and communication – that could be as simple as smaller, less formal meeting spaces, entire wall of dry erase whiteboards, and keeping the organization as lean and as flat as possible.  If you see various functional, geographic or project teams building silos, work on bridging them.  Rotate people and their job functions / realm of responsibility, constantly assess the alignment of the talent you have with the needs of the business.  And for crying out loud, please inspire people by what you do vs. what you say.  Rule #1 – Always error on the side of calling people vs. emailing them.  If an email can’t be sent without having to be scrolled, see rule #1.  If you feel like you have to copy 15 different people, see rule #1.  Get more effective & efficient with your email signature line, i.e. if you need something, end it with 411; if it’s urgent, start it with 911; if action is required – write Action Required.  Combine several short, brief ideas or replies into one vs. sending multiple.  Get rid of the stupid auto replies that tell people you’re on vacation – does anyone care, especially since a) the message is outdated, and b) you have a Blackberry and got the email and chose not to reply anyway.
   

Let’s get smart and use email as yet another tool to enable the development of our relationships not replace it!  As always, I welcome your comments.  David