{"id":618,"date":"2007-01-31T08:04:21","date_gmt":"2007-01-31T14:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/01\/onboarding-executives\/"},"modified":"2007-01-31T08:04:56","modified_gmt":"2007-01-31T14:04:56","slug":"onboarding-executives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/01\/onboarding-executives\/","title":{"rendered":"Onboarding Executives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From BusinessWeek online&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/magazine\/content\/07_06\/b4020077.htm?campaign_id=rss_null\" target=\"_blank\">How To Take The Reins At Top Speed<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In today&#8217;s era of increasingly activist investors and boards, a heightened focus on fast results is making the first few months feel more like a trial by fire than a honeymoon.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n&#8220;Many senior executives feel they have a much shorter time frame to prove themselves.&#8221; <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This accelerated productivity demand is common to almost all positions within a company. I am appreciative of CEOs finally having this demand placed upon them also. In sales, it has been this way for years . . . maybe decades.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Despite having a name only a consultant or HR professional could love &#8211; onboarding is also known as management integration or, worse, assimilation coaching &#8211; the practice is taking off. Headhunters Egon Zehnder International and Heidrick &#038; Struggles International (HSII ) both report rising levels of interest from companies for their onboarding services. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We are making adjustments to our sales offering also. One thing we learned years ago was that good salespeople still can fail in a new role if there is not a plan for onboarding (that is an awful word). Hence, we now include our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.selectmetrix.com\/Sales_Dev_Plan.html\" target=\"_blank\">Sales Development Plan<\/a> for all sales candidates our customers hire. Since incorporating this approach, we have seen a drastic reduction in the new salesperson&#8217;s ramp-up time. The goal with any new sales hire is to get them up to speed on revenue production as soon as possible. Unfortunately, many companies hire a salesperson, train them on the product\/service offering and then put them out in the field. I&#8217;m always amazed that a company would spend so much money acquiring and hiring an important piece to their business and then almost neglect them once they are in place.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At a time when <strong>CEO failure rates are running at 40%<\/strong>, after all, helping executives &#8220;stick&#8221; makes sense. &#8220;It&#8217;s like an insurance policy for your placement,&#8221; says Rich Rosen, a partner in Heidrick&#8217;s leadership consulting practice. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure where that 40% number comes from, but it is noticeable. I wonder what sales position failure rates are? In sales, I would deem a failure to be a salesperson who simply performs at an average revenue level or below. I suspect it is greater than 40%.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Executive search firms counter that where coaching relationships exist they&#8217;re careful to make leadership teams off-limits to recruiters. And they note that headhunters aren&#8217;t necessarily trying to double as coaches. &#8220;We&#8217;re training our search consultants to recognize a need,&#8221; says Joseph E. Griesedieck, Vice-Chairman of Korn\/Ferry International. &#8220;<em>And then they bring in the people who are experts.<\/em>&#8221; <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We are working on a similar model at Select Metrix and hope to have more to report on this topic soon.<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, a quick excerpt from the article that caught my eye:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For Citrin, who co-wrote the new-leader guide <em>You&#8217;re in Charge &#8211; Now What?<\/em> with fellow kingmaker Thomas J. Neff, onboarding can be as simple as <strong>giving a client a copy of his book<\/strong> and sharing insights over a leisurely breakfast. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have a general disgust with this approach. I have worked with consultants in the past who believe their book is the definitive authority for a specific topic. I prefer consultants who roll up their sleeves and get down in the mud with their clients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From BusinessWeek online&#8217;s How To Take The Reins At Top Speed: In today&#8217;s era of increasingly activist investors and boards, a heightened focus on fast results is making the first few months feel more like a trial by fire than a honeymoon. &#8230; &#8220;Many senior executives feel they have a much shorter time frame to prove themselves.&#8221; This accelerated productivity demand is common to almost all positions within a company. I am appreciative of CEOs finally having this demand placed upon them also. In sales, it has been this way for years . . . maybe decades. Despite having a name only a consultant or HR professional could love &#8211;&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/01\/onboarding-executives\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,23,4,11],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-9Y","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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