How to find leaders to sit on your company's board
Rob Andrews, chairman and CEO of Houston-based Allen Austin Global Executive Search, has been in the executive search business for 25 years.
He describes the task of helping Houston companies find board leadership as searching for “needles in a haystack.” But, as consistently one of the highest-ranked firms on the List, he’s often successful in that search.
What jumpstarts a search for an executive board member?
You cannot hit a target you do not have. We work hard upfront to determine who and what we’re looking for. Once we determine the critical success factors and performance objectives, it’s relatively simple to find the right person. (There are) many phone calls, conversations and assessments. But much of the most complicated and time consuming work is in the needs analysis upfront.
Building a board is very much like building a leadership team. The best way to build it is deliberately with diversity of thought, gender, age, generation, ethnicity and experience. It should be representative of the stakeholders. Determine what attributes are desirable for the team at large, then determine the individual makeup in order to ensure a balanced team.
What makes a successful board placement?
We look for people who are willing to continually press for improvement and ask the difficult questions. The most important dynamic when building a board is trust. If the CEO and board members don’t trust one another, there is no way for the board to deliver maximum value. Guard against a board being populated exclusively by professional board members. A true operating executive who’s kept their knives sharp offers a much different perspective.
