Hire a President or General Manager for Scaling Companies

Sometimes the right role doesn’t exist on paper until the right person walks into the conversation. I’ve always believed that when businesses speak to highly experienced individuals with a broad skill set, they often start to see opportunities they hadn’t previously considered. The cost of bringing in that person is often significantly outweighed by the efficiencies, cost savings, operational improvements, and strategic value they deliver across the business. One question companies often ask is: “Are they expensive?” In reality, no, because highly experienced individuals bring a depth of knowledge, commercial awareness, and practical delivery experience that can save multiples of their cost, often within a relatively short period of time. Fresh thinking, combined with real industry experience, frequently uncovers solutions, process improvements, and commercial opportunities that internal teams simply haven’t had the time or perspective to identify. Thinking outside the box when hiring can sometimes be the catalyst that re-energises teams, improves client experience, strengthens operational oversight, and drives meaningful long-term change. Please do reach out if you are considering the above. Available immediately.

Made it to the final round for an executive leadership role recently…and didn’t get it. Those ones hit a little different because by the end of the process, you’ve already started mentally working there. You spend days building a detailed 120-day operational plan and presenting it to the executive team. You meet the people who would’ve reported to you and immediately start thinking through how you’d support them, where the friction points are, what’s probably slowing the business down, and where the team may quietly be carrying too much weight. You start mentally reorganizing departments while driving to basketball practice. You’re in the shower solving problems for a company that technically hasn’t hired you. You casually start referring to their challenges as “we should probably fix that.” At one point I caught myself defending their business model at dinner like I was already on payroll. Then eventually an email, very professionally written and delivered by an ATS system with all the warmth of a prescription label, arrives reminding you that “we” should not be fixing anything. What’s funny is I’ve also been on the other side of these decisions a lot over the years. And despite what candidates imagine, most executive hiring conversations are rarely: “This person is clearly great and this other person clearly isn’t.” Usually it’s a leadership team sitting around a conference table trying to choose between two capable people while attempting to predict the future with incomplete information and a lot riding on the decision. Who can lead the team? Who can handle the pressure when things get messy? Can we afford this person? Who feels right for where the business is right now? Those are hard, sometimes agonizing, calls. And honestly, going through it from the candidate side again reminded me how much humanity exists underneath all the polished decks, scorecards, interviews, and executive-speak. That doesn’t make losing one any more fun, of course. But it does remind you that no matter how senior the role gets, this stuff is still deeply human. Anyway. Brief ego hit. Slightly aggressive walk around the kitchen island. And then right back at it.

Hire people who are better than you at the thing you hired them for. This was the hardest lesson I ever learned as a young CEO. Early on, I wanted to be the smartest person in every room. I'd hire people I could outwork, outthink, and outpace. It felt safe. It also kept the company small. The breakthrough was hiring my first person who was better than me at their job. Not just slightly better. Obviously, undeniably better. I was terrified. I was also wrong about every fear I had. The right hire doesn't make you smaller. It makes the whole operation bigger. The work I used to do badly, they did beautifully. The work I should have been doing all along, I finally had time for. If you're the smartest person on your team, you've built a ceiling, not a company.

Someone asked me what percentage of the IT leaders I screen actually have the people side of the job figured out. I said half. Maybe. Most of them came up through technology. They were good at it, so they kept getting promoted. At some point they're running a team and the job changes completely. Technical skills got them there but knowing how to manage people, read a room, and get a team moving is a different set of muscles. Nothing about being great at technology develops those automatically. The ones who figured it out usually didn't do it naturally. They worked at it. They'll tell you themselves it was uncomfortable and took longer than they expected. They pushed their batting average from .225 to .265 and kept grinding. They got there, but it wasn't handed to them. The mistake I see companies make over and over is promoting the best technician and expecting a great leader to show up. Those are two different people. Sometimes they're the same person but you can't assume that just because someone is exceptional at the work. When I'm interviewing someone for a leadership role, I'm listening for whether they talk about their team or just their own output. Whether they can describe a situation where someone under them struggled and what they actually did about it. That's usually where you find out pretty fast which half you're looking at.

Hiring is funny. Most of us spend hours interviewing for intelligence. We spend days or weeks evaluating experience. And then we spend years wishing we’d paid more attention to character. As Warren Buffett puts it: “Look for integrity, intelligence, and energy. If they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.” The good news? Integrity isn’t just something to hire for—it’s something to become. The people who build trust, keep their word, and do the right thing when nobody’s watching may not always be the loudest people in the room. But they’re usually the ones still standing when the dust settles. Hire smart. Hire energetic. But hire trustworthy first. Everything else compounds from there. #Leadership #Hiring #Culture #SalesLeadership #Trust #ThePartnershipEffect

Not every problem needs executive-level support. But some problems stay unsolved because the support is not senior enough. That distinction is important. Because when something is going wrong in a business, the instinct is often to look for: > more capacity > a specialist > a tool > an agency > a contractor > a faster pair of hands And sometimes that works. But there are certain problems that tend to persist because they need a different kind of intervention. Problems like: - repeated strategic drift - weak prioritisation - lack of ownership - confusion between teams - stalled execution - inconsistent decision-making ... or a function that performs tactically but not coherently Those are usually not just execution problems. They are judgement problems. > Structure problems. > Leadership problems. And that is where seniority starts to matter. Not because senior people are always better. Because some problems require enough experience to: ✅ simplify complexity ✅ make trade-offs ✅ create clarity ✅ and hold direction under pressure That's why Rob Nicholls and I built www.findafractional.co.uk so businesses can find the leadership experience and judgement needed at critical moments without resorting to a full-time hire. Which current challenge would benefit most from real executive ownership?

Search isn't just for CEOs. It's for any role where the wrong hire costs millions. CFO, CTO, VP-level, functional heads—if impact matters, search matters. The best talents are already performing. Can you afford to miss them?

Why do some hiring managers fill roles faster than others? I've been thinking about this recently. It's rarely because they have a bigger brand. Or a bigger budget. Usually they are better at three things: • They know exactly what they're looking for • They move decisively when they find it • They communicate clearly throughout the process Sounds obvious. But you'd be surprised how often hiring slows down when one of those three is missing. A reminder that clarity often beats complexity.

Sometimes the right hire isn’t filling an open position. It’s discovering a role that didn’t exist until you matched the right person’s strengths with the right business need. Last night, I used AI to build a leadership profile based on the CliftonStrengths and Working Genius results of someone I’d recently met whose values aligned with my work. Then I had AI interview me about my business, bottlenecks, and unmet needs to identify where someone with those strengths could create the greatest value. The result? What started as one opportunity evolved into a role better than either of us had originally considered. Today, Kirsten Connell started supporting Strategic People Partners as a Client Delivery Consultant. As we explored her strengths and energy, it became clear that one of the biggest opportunities for SPP client engagement wasn’t generating new opportunities. It is increasing the speed and consistency with which written deliverables move from concept to completion. What began as an assessment exercise became role design. I’m grateful for tools like Working Genius that help identify where our best energy belongs. Just as importantly, they help us see where we need others. None of us are designed to do everything well. The real opportunity is bringing together complementary strengths so we can deliver better work, create more value, and make a greater impact for the communities we serve. And I’m grateful for a God who knows us deeply and connects the right people at the right time!

Hiring is not driven by visibility. It is driven by decision. And every decision comes down to one question: 👉 Can we trust this person to deliver? That’s it. Not: - How active you are - How visible you are - How well you tell your story But how clearly you reduce risk. Most candidates don’t fail because of lack of competence. They fail because the decision feels uncertain.