What is going on here? Are the CEOs lying? Are they misinformed? Or have they just not bothered to talk with their own people?
The Real Rules
What the Mirror Doesn't Show
When CEOs talk there is a tendency for them to say the world would be better if everyone were just like themselves. So their speeches and observations on management reflect a self-image of which they are deservingly proud. Yet very few people really do become CEOs, and a world full of them might not necessarily be a better place. But they're not lying, nor are they misinformed.
CEOs and their HR executives are each describing only parts of a more complicated and interconnected reality. Some skills matter more and some less at various stages within a person's career. That's also true during the process by which a company and an individual evaluate each other and decide whether or not there is a good fit.
That's the basic premise of this book: most of what has been written about the characteristics of successful executives is true, but it is also only part of the story.
The well-known part of this story comes from those at the top, looking at their own reflections. They legitimately speak of standards and aspirations for their successors that will serve the company. But these skills take much time to develop. Meanwhile, there is a parallel process in which the market identifies, tracks, sorts and signals those executives who will advance. That process is not covered in these CEO speeches.
Surveys Says: "SKILLS"; SCHOOLS TEACH THEORY
Several years ago, the Harvard Business School did a survey of its alumni, a high percentage of whom, of course, had gone on to become successful. The executives were asked to rank the various characteristics that determined success, and to place those characteristics as either long-term or short-term factors. Harvard recognized that these characteristics were likely to be different for young alums versus older graduates.
Surprisingly, while the factors shifted a little, the short- and long-term characteristics were consistent. More surprising, these lists were dominated by skills and attributes such as communications, analytic thinking, teamwork, integrity, and perseverance. Few of these were subjects taught explicitly at the Harvard Business School. And yet the school has a wonderful reputation as being the school that spawns the most CEOs, the school with the highest percentage who end up in the executive suite, and whose graduates are paid the most right out of school.
So what does that mean? Does it imply that the business school's principal function is to attract and sort people by these characteristics? Does it mean that these surveys are not complete? Unless you understand the rest of the real-world factors, and the issues of phasing and timing, it looks like a puzzle. Harvard has the highest starting salaries of any MBA program in the country. But is that because more of its graduates go directly into senior management? No. It is because a high percentage become investment bankers, money managers and consultants. The premium they are paid relates to raw intellectual capability and the flexibility to handle the variety of assignments that go with these professions. The premium also rewards the drive, energy and initiative required to work in these settings and the interpersonal skills and styles required to relate productively to client executives from day one. The premium also pays for the fact that most of the new recruits will wash out or quit long before they make partner.
The Jordan Rules Aren't In The NBA Rulebook
So what's the rest of the story? How do you get in the game, stay in it, and position yourself for visibility and mobility at the right time and at the right stages?
Very few senior executives understand the rest of the story. They will, if prompted, acknowledge how they did a lot of the other things that it takes to be successful that we will talk about in this book. They understand the "real-world" rules, the randomness, the "missionary work" that is necessary for someone on this career track. They understand that one must be focused, deliberate, and well organized, not just visionary and inspiring, to have a broad set of career options. But these kinds of things are less fun to talk about. All of us want people to view the world in positive and noble terms, because that keeps us going as we encounter the boredom, drudgery, frustration and irritation that we all know is there, all the time.
That's why I responded to a "dare" to write a kind of "graduation speech" that no one ever really gives, because it deals with these kinds of "real rules" as well as the "big picture" principles that are the usual topics for these events.
The Graduation Speech You Will Never Hear
As a CEO, I have given a few commencement speeches. As a dean, you don't give many yourself, but you hear a lot more of them when you graduate bachelor's degrees, masters and doctoral students on multiple campuses.
Last week I pulled my cap and gown from the closet and dusted them off for another season-sort of like baseball cleats. Every year, a little fantasy of mine is to be sitting on a platform, listening as some dignitary violates all the sacred conventions of commencement speeches and tells all the students in the audience the realities of life. In this fantasy, the august speaker gives them a jolt of reality-rains on the parade in a big way. I chuckle each time I think about it, because it will never happen.
In the traditional graduation speech, the orator starts with something lofty like this: "With hard work everything is possible." In my fantasy speech he then adds, "But, of course, luck is really what we are talking about. Some very lazy people strike it rich. Being with the right company when it goes public will reward some of you slackers while many of you hard workers will be forced out with little to show after 15 or 20 years."
Then the speaker exhorts the audience to "find heroes and mentors" but adds this: "But, more times than not, you will be working for dopes with less talent than yourself. Your challenge will be to hold your tongue and get along until initiative, or luck, delivers you from ineptness." (Personally, I have never met a great executive who does not still remember the worst boss he or she ever had. Usually they can remember two or three.)
Graduation speeches exhort students to see everything as possible and to tap unbounded possibilities. But the world really tells you to have patience and wait your turn. Patience means understanding that the world does not exist to satisfy your career ambitions, but that your contributions to society are the quid pro quo for your needs to be considered. "And, graduates, remember this-it takes a long time for an organization to figure out it is you, and not the chairman's nephew, who is doing all the great work," the speaker says.
Graduation speeches stress thinking about the big picture, reaching out for breadth and diversity. But what the world really says is, tend to the here-and-now, focus on the local issues as defined by your boss and job. The real world says you had better prove reliable to your colleagues in the little details before you get to play with the bigger toys and resources in an organization.
The speaker invokes the brotherhood of mankind and our solidarity as humans. But in the fantasy, this speaker says: "You are going to run into plenty of people who will not like you, and there is damn little you can do about it. Sure, there is bigotry based on gender, color or religion, but they also will not like you for other equally irrational reasons-you just do something that irritates them." (Or you remind them of someone who jilted or insulted them.) But it may be a while before I hear a speaker exhort graduates to ignore this inevitability as much as possible and say, "The fight is frequently not worth it, and the opponent is usually not worth the effort anyway. Live with it."
The rest of the fantasy speech continues in the same vein. On the left, I've put the traditional cliche. On the right, the reality rules.
Cliché Reality Rule
"Speak the truth, hold strong against all temptations to prevaricate and make no moral compromises."
"In the real world you do not talk in elevators, you do not criticize the organization except in subtle and acceptable ways you do not demand that organizations take on the responsibility for solving all the world's problems. Your obligation for honesty is for major and moral issues, not what you truly think of the boss's recent brainstorm."
"Seek beauty and ennoblement in the arts, in literature, in poetry, dance, painting and music."
"You had better find most of your beauty and ennoblement in the more commonplace arts like driving a car pool, coaching Little League and serving snacks as room parent. For most of us, our primary artistry will show, if at all, only after our children turn 25 and begin to discover, to their amazement, that their parents not only had good judgment but actually contributed positively to their own development and character."
Cliché Reality Rule
"Accept and relish the challenge of change. Our world will be unrecognizable in a few decades and you the graduate will play a critical role in bringing on the new millennium."
People hate change-and with good reason. Lots of changes are hardly for the better (tell me again why we deregulated phone service). The key is having the judgment to figure out which changes are good for you."
So, when you put it altogether, what does this real-world commencement speech sound like? Well, you would come away with the following notes on a pad:
Cliché Reality Rule
"Work hard."
"Reach for nobility and love of mankind."
"Learn from great minds and seek challenging situations."
"Do not be too surprised if someone else gets luckier."
"Do not feel you have to convert every bigot or snob. Pick your friends and pick your fights and save your strength for the battles over your most basic values."
"Do not be discouraged when you end up working for a series of dopes. You will learn more from those who screw up than by copying the relative few who are magnificent role models."
"Value honesty above all."
"Do not be afraid to think of things as they should be."
"Do not feel the need to share the unvarnished truth at every single moment."
"Understand that there are thousands of reasons and thousands of years behind why things are the way they are."
"It is important you Start by making sure your own children have at least the make your mark on same benefits and values you were given in this world.
This fantasy speech appeared in a slightly different form in the Atlanta Constitution on March 11, 1996.
There's one thing that makes me sure that this is the graduation speech you will never actually hear. That's because it sounds too much like what your parents have told you for years. And no matter how true, great speakers know that 18-year-olds do not cheer for something they have heard so many times before.
But on behalf of parents and those who have seen it all play out this way, wouldn't it be fun just once to have someone in a cap and gown tell it like it is? We all know the reasons why not, of course. Graduates learn it soon enough and our job during commencement is to give them reasons to jump out of the academic nest and take on the real world, even when the real world may greet them more with a shrug than a cheer.
When I wrote this book, it was clearly with tongue in cheek. But it does suggest that, much as there is an insider's view of success that should be grounded in the details, so too is there an insider's view of the workings of the market for senior executives that has lessons for all of us. These are the practical (and irrational) realities that the professionals understand. These are the secrets of the search firm files. And these are the lessons all executives who make it to the top understand.
Extracting the Secrets
How We Learned the Lessons
The methodology we used was straightforward. We created a study instrument that started with the skills, experiences, personality types and career paths that make up a senior executive's profile. We looked for variables and patterns that brought people to the attention of a search firm, the characteristics most likely to make an executive the winning candidate, and the attributes that were most important to the success of top executives. We looked at which traits were fixable, and at which skills and traits held people back, but were ultimately correctable. We looked, too, for fatal flaws, characteristics that knocked people out of the running for good.
We had access to the files on all the searches that Ray and Berndtson did in the last two-and-one-half years, and selected a broad sample of 78 senior management positions as the basis of our study. The 30 partners who handled these searches filled out our surveys. I also conducted extensive interviews with each partner to gather a full perspective. Secrets from the Search Firm Files is not conjecture.
We did not guess at which qualities people looked for in hiring executives, nor did we rely on opinions of executives as to why they were successful. We had the actual "spec sheets" that are used to guide each search. Nor did we have to guess which traits gave certain individuals the specific opportunity to consider offers for mobility and advancement. We also had the "presentation" reports the search executives used in helping the hiring firm winnow down to the final candidates.
Best of all, we had the perspective of people who, collectively, have handled more than 5,000 searches during the last 20 years.
The Data in Our Database
The 78 senior management searches whose files were part of this study were for strategic business unit heads, subsidiary presidents, sector executives, senior corporate officers and chief executive officers. We did not include searches for technical positions or corporate staff positions. We excluded positions where expertise in one topic, rather than leadership skill and potential for advancement into general management, was the most important characteristic. Table 1.1 shows the distribution of these searches in our sample by job type. The compensation levels ranged from the low- and mid- six figures to totals well in seven figures. We excluded searches where a language skill or a particular cultural background (i.e., for a particular overseas posting) was a dominant characteristic because these searches tended to have different sorting characteristics.
The data in the tables in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 reflect a very high response rate from the partners. In only a handful of cases (less than 10) did we conclude we couldn't obtain data that was comparable and dependable to be included in the final tabulation. In essentially all these cases, this was because someone involved in the search was no longer with the firm. In a few cases, the research consultant had left and it was not clear enough from the records how all the initial candidates were discovered. In a few cases, we had the specs and the presentation reports but the partner who knew why the finalist was selected was not available. So while all the currently active partners contributed to the open-ended questions, the priority ranking of factors reflects 85-90% of the sample, depending upon the category.
Limitations and Caveats
Our study sample was big enough to reasonably draw conclusions that the patterns we saw are likely to occur in a very high percentage of other similar searches. So the broad lessons are both reliable and, to people familiar with the process, not too surprising. What no survey can tell us, of course, is how personal "chemistry" and fit affect a particular search, and those obviously affect searches to a high degree. There are candidates with all the right background and all the right profile who just do not ignite a spark with either the search consultant or the client even though on paper they look like perfect candidates. Similarly, we cannot categorically say that unless you have these characteristics and patterns, you cannot get in the game. People get hired on hunches, intuition, or a gut sense that someone's experience in a different area will translate well.
The point is, the rules are not hard and fast and there are exceptions. The biggest caveat of all is that you have to combine the profile with specific opportunities. A .300 hitter sitting on the bench will not get any hits, while a relief pitcher at least has a practical chance of a home run when he is at the plate. So getting a chance to swing at big league pitches is an important skill. But once you get this chance you had better know how to hit for average, how to hit for scoring and how to hit as part of an offense. But somebody first has to put your name on a lineup card.
Successful executives are made and not born. Family background, family social or economic status, attending the "right" schools are anything but determinative. In fact, the most common shaping experiences for successful senior executives are not the most distinguished families or the most affluent backgrounds, or the most prestigious schools, but those settings where struggles and testing and lack of "predetermination" are present.
In other words, anybody can do it. And people from essentially every kind of background have done it. However, very few will do it, because the odds are low, the work is hard, and the risks are high. But it is clear that those who understand this game, those that understand the imperatives of this food chain, are the ones who end up with the best chance of ending up near its top.
THE VIEW FROM THE TOP
Every food chain has a top and a bottom. What is unique about studying the top is that one can learn a great deal about the dynamics of the entire chain. This is not equally true at the bottom, or even in the middle. By studying the "dominating" capabilities of persons at the top, we learn something about what the other members of the chain must be like. We can also study characteristics that prevent top people from being dominated. This too tells us a great deal about the characteristics and limitations of those below.
The global market for senior executives is, basically, a food chain. It is driven by the inexorable pressures of corporate evolution and the Darwinian dynamic of survival of the fittest. Each year, hundreds of thousands of business school graduates, MBAs, management trainees, entrepreneurs and technical professionals enter the first rung of the managerial food chain and begin a long, slow climb. Many are ejected, more stall out, and only a few enter that magic echelon where they can pick among an unlimited number of senior jobs. These select few can move out and up whenever they are frustrated or seek new challenges. The global search firms keep track of them, keep in touch with them and promote their achievements and reputations to potential employers. That is why studying those executives who move from one senior job to another is such a good way to learn about the skills that make for executive success. It is this premise that is at the heart of the Secrets from the Search Firm Files.
Three Steps to the Executive Suite
The process of climbing to a new executive position involves three discrete steps:
- Matching the "specs" of the search that the new company is conducting. This means having the background, experiences and skills that fit the job requirements.
- Getting noticed or discovered by the search firm handling the assignment.
- Outscoring the other candidates who have succeeded in stages one and two.
This section presents the results of our survey. You will see the pattern of how some of these factors are constant for all three stages, and how others shift up and down in relative importance.
PART ONE Three Steps to the Executive Suite
In Chapter 2, we describe the specifications that the client firms established. We address two key dimensions: Why is that key element of the job specification so important, and how do executives develop those skills? We will talk about typical experiences, and the drills and practices that executives who have these skills tend to follow.
In the next chapter, "The Semi-Finals," we focus on attracting the attention of the search firms. We also talk about these same key executive characteristics, how some are more important and others less; but we focus on how individuals show that they have these experiences. Also, how do search firms discover who has these personal skills and backgrounds? We talk about how the search firms decide how much credibility to give to each of these characteristics when interviewing candidates.
In the third chapter in this section (Chapter 4),"The Finals," we talk about the same characteristics with the focus on how the client firms judge who has the necessary traits. We look at how search firms and client companies assess what is the least scientific, but most important, factor in the competition for top jobs. This is the elusive notion of "cultural fit."
