9 out of 10 companies looking for senior management quickly walk into one of these traps.
The network trap
It might be tempting to recruit a manager from your own network. But we often find that this is a bad move. There are at least three reasons for this.
Firstly, our private networks are restricted in size. This gives us a small base from which to select the correct person. The risk is that we might employ someone who is not perfect but just good enough. The security of employing someone from your own network can therefore quickly turn into a false sense of security.
Secondly, we are often less critical of those we already know and have a relationship with. We have a tendency to think the best and overestimate their abilities. The blinkers we wear when it comes to any possible shortcomings or limitations they may have will, in the worst case scenario, result in us selecting the wrong person for the job.
The third risk of employing someone from our own network is to do with the actual relationship with the person you are employing. Should something go wrong we will not only have lost time and money in the process but also created a problem in an existing relationship. Perhaps at more than one level.
The CFO trap
An easy and unfortunately very widespread practice is for the financial manager to also take on the role of acting Managing Director.
The risk of this is that you might end up with two roles that are not optimally covered, with a junior taking on the role left open by the financial manager and a financial specialist in the role previously held by the executive officer.
For obvious reasons this is rarely a successful solution. You also have to consider the "noise" generated when the acting managers have to return to their old roles.
The consultant trap
The Managing Director role needs to be filled by an experienced "doer", someone who will roll up their sleeves and make the right stuff happen. A dangerous trap to walk into here is that of hiring a consultant.
You will then often end up with an analytical number cruncher or process expert who specialises in defining what needs to be done and how it should be done but who might not be very good at implementation.
The consultant will also never invest fully in the company as they will work for several clients at the same time. This will create situations in which your projects and deadlines might be postponed or afforded less attention due to other assignments running in parallel.
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