Hiring your next CEO is a critical point in your organization’s future. It’s important to have a thoughtful approach and a detailed plan in place to ensure a smooth transition and avoid any oversights. This isn’t your everyday search process.
Job Description
Depending how long it’s been since you last hired your CEO and how much your organization has been evolving it’s time to review the job description and make adjustments. Capture the challenges your organization is facing and what qualities the new leader will need to embody. It may be helpful to consult with key partners within your organization to develop a comprehensive list of duties and qualities.
Strategic Vision
To hire your next leader you need to be clear and transparent about your organization’s strategic vision. When you evaluate candidates, consider more than just past experience. How does their vision align with the future of your organization? What demonstrable experience do they bring that can help shape the success of your organization?
Search Process and Interview Questions
You’ll want to identify key members to participate in the search committee. You’ll also want to assist them in developing a consistent list of interview questions and encourage them to provide ongoing feedback throughout the interview process. It’s good to have a plan when conducting these searches. The search for a CEO is likely to be more time consuming than more traditional roles so you’ll want to allow time for travel to your location and formal and informal meet and greets with key stakeholders. These events may occur over several weeks or months. Providing your interview team with training and expectations ahead of the start of the search can be very valuable. You’ll want to ensure they are comfortable with more advanced questioning that uses behavioral and situational judgment questions. This may involve developing hypothetical scenarios or equipping them with a list of probing questions to help dig further into responses. To ensure consistency you may want to develop and provide evaluation tools like rubrics or other scoring systems. Consider providing the candidates or finalists with some psychometric assessments. Also, provide the search committee with the skills and background to assess the candidates’ mentoring experience and to observe key partner engagement skills.
Offer Package
Your offer package will need to include a combination of salary, benefits, stock or equity options, and possibly a signing or relocation incentive. You’ll want to do your research and benchmark your intended compensation package against others in your industry. The best way to land on a great offer package is to have discussions with your finalists about what is meaningful to them. Is more leave time upfront important? Do they desire professional development opportunities or workplace and schedule flexibility? Will they have young children entering the school system and need access to someone that can provide assistance and guidance on making that selection? It can be helpful to take a consultative approach to building the ideal offer package.
Onboarding Experience
It may also be an ideal time to review your onboarding experience.The first 90 days are critical in the engagement experience for a new hire and you certainly want to ensure the “wow” factor with your new CEO. Things to consider building into the onboarding experience:
- Assign a mentor
- System Access
- Provide a checklist of new hire tasks for:
- The first week
- The first month
- The wrap-up of the 90 days
- Pre-set meetings on their calendar with key stakeholder
- Feedback opportunities at set points along the way (first week, first 30 days, completion of the 90 days)
- Access to essential information that allows them to “dig in”
Milestones and Work Evaluation
When it’s time to evaluate the success of your new CEO, consider how well they took charge.
Then consider how well they evolved and kept the momentum of the organization based on their leadership.
New leadership can be intimidating but it can also be a time of epic change management. Preparing for that change ensures a more thoughtful experience for all involved. If you are planning for an upcoming leadership change and want to check in on how prepared you are, feel free to reach out.