HOW WE SEE IT
The obvious candidate isn't always the right candidate.
A good search starts with an honest account of what the role has to deliver. From there, it's a series of decisions: where to look, which assumptions to test, and when there's enough evidence to make a sound recommendation.
Turn the requirement into a search.
Clients know what they need the appointment to achieve. Our role is to translate that into a realistic mix of capabilities, experience, and priorities, then see how it shows up in the market: sometimes as a title, sometimes as a combination of experience that no single title quite captures. When several leaders share the decision, that includes helping them agree on what matters before the search begins, and how they'll judge candidates once they're in the room.
The brief we start a search with and the brief we finish it with aren't always the same; noticing the difference and adjusting for it is part of the work.
Broaden the search for a reason.
Conventional backgrounds and familiar companies may hold the answer. They shouldn't define the search automatically. Where the required capability can credibly come from elsewhere, we look there too: reaching into a network built over two decades, not just the names a database turns up, and not just the people currently looking. Most of the right candidates for a senior appointment aren't.
Leadership is more than experience.
Career history explains where someone has been. Senior appointments also need judgement and character: the ability to act well when the answer is contested, incomplete or unpopular.
Who they are. What they know. What they do with it.
Getting the offer right isn't the finish line.
Presenting the right candidate isn't the end of a search. Counter-offers, competing processes, a package that has to work for both sides: that's where appointments are actually won or lost. I stay closely involved in that conversation, guiding both sides through it until the offer is accepted and the start date is fixed.
That’s the thinking. The clearest way to see it is on a live brief.