Search in Practice
Each search has its own context, constraints and demands. These are a few examples of how we have worked with clients to make sound hiring decisions.
Scaling Beyond the Founder
After a decade of growth, the founder of a successful technology business needed to step away from day-to-day operations to focus on increasingly complex international opportunities. At the same time, the company was implementing EOS, with an investor temporarily providing operational leadership while the long-term structure was determined. Having recently implemented EOS within our own firm, we understood both the language and the discipline required of the incoming leader. We worked closely with the founder and leadership team to recruit a VP Operations who could assume end-to-end accountability for deployment, customer success, support and solutions consulting, while building the processes, staffing models, KPIs and Rocks required to scale. The engagement also developed into a long-term relationship with a team that had historically been reluctant to use retained search.
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The Right Search Model for the Client
A fast-growing, private equity-backed healthcare business needed to build several key leadership capabilities during a period of significant transition, including a change in CEO. Rather than defaulting every mandate to a traditional retained search, we worked with the organization to identify where its internal team could effectively carry the process forward and where our research, market access and early candidate engagement would add the greatest value. Across several assignments, we provided targeted search support that complemented the client's own interviewing and assessment capability. As the leadership team evolved, we continued working with the incoming CEO, private equity sponsor and internal talent team, adapting our involvement to the needs of each mandate. The result was a flexible partnership that maintained search quality while using the client's internal resources intelligently and efficiently.
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A Search Where Judgment Mattered
A highly regarded professional services firm was building a specialized board effectiveness practice and needed to add a leader who could eventually help carry the practice forward. The role required an uncommon combination of intellectual depth, maturity, commercial judgment and the ability to build credibility with some of the most senior leaders in the market. Because the profile was difficult to define and the talent pool was narrow, the quality of the search depended as much on calibration and assessment as on identification. We worked closely with the client throughout the process, bringing disciplined preparation, thorough market work and consistent communication to every stage. The successful appointment was matched by something equally important: the client's confidence that the work would be thoughtful, rigorous and on target.
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Building the Leadership Team Around the Strategy
A private equity firm approached us with an ambitious healthcare platform that, at the outset, consisted of little more than investment capital, a CEO and a growth thesis. We partnered with the sponsor and CEO to build the leadership team required to turn that strategy into an operating business, recruiting across operations, finance, marketing, M&A, HR and strategy as the platform expanded. As growth accelerated into the U.S., the mandate broadened from executive leadership to other business-critical roles required to support the organization at scale. Although the client initially considered engaging U.S.-based search firms for that expansion, they ultimately continued with us after comparing the quality and depth of the work. What began as building a leadership team became a long-term partnership supporting multiple stages of growth across North America.
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When Candidate Relationships Matter
In a client relationship spanning nearly two decades, multiple leadership teams and changes in ownership, we were supporting the recruitment of a senior commercial leader when an extended process put a particularly strong candidate relationship at risk. As our understanding of the role and the market deepened, we became increasingly convinced that the candidate we had met earlier was the right person for the business. Rather than simply moving on, we went back to him directly, acknowledged the challenges in the process and had an open conversation about why we believed the opportunity deserved another look. The trust established through those conversations allowed us to re-engage him successfully, and he ultimately joined the organization. Today, he remains an important leader in the business and has worked with us to continue building his own team.
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Supporting a Leader Through the Next Stage of Growth
An executive we had originally recruited into another organization later became CEO of a healthcare platform entering an ambitious new stage of growth. Her mandate is to evolve the business from a largely local operating model into a national platform, combining organic growth with the acquisition and integration of complementary clinics and practitioners. Rather than approaching each leadership need as a separate transaction, we have worked with her to think across the organization about the business-critical capabilities required to support that strategy, including procurement, finance and talent. The relationship reflects something we value deeply: becoming a trusted partner to leaders over time, as their responsibilities, organizations and challenges evolve.
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A Different CEO for a Different Chapter
Several years after helping a national professional association recruit a CEO to lead a significant change agenda, we were asked to support the organization through its next leadership transition. The foundation had been built; the mandate was now to leverage it — strengthening external influence and stakeholder relationships while maintaining organizational stability, member value and a strong partnership with the board. In a complex, physician-led and volunteer-driven environment, that required a careful balance of strategic leadership, external credibility and hands-on organizational effectiveness. Working closely with the board and selection committee, we built the search around what the organization needed for its next stage rather than replicating the profile that had succeeded before. The search culminated in the appointment of a leader whose capabilities aligned with a very different chapter in the organization's evolution.
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Designing a Leadership Transition
The owners of a highly specialized business had built the company over several decades and were ready to step back from day-to-day operations without stepping away from its creative and strategic direction. The challenge was not simply finding a new leader, but introducing one in a way the organization could absorb. We worked with the owners to define the role initially as COO, creating space for the incoming executive to earn trust, establish credibility and gradually assume broader leadership. In a very narrow market, we identified someone running a comparable business unit within a much larger organization who was ready for full enterprise responsibility. She ultimately became President, and the relationship has since expanded into several additional leadership searches across the organization.
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