At The Ansley Consulting Group, we focus everything that we do on helping senior client executives plan and develop their executive teams. We provide ongoing counsel to help them identify organizational needs, organize around strengths, promote the right people, and to make the best of every outside recruiting opportunity. We urge them to capitalize on those opportunities by bringing in the type of world class talent that will not only excel in the current role but is also capable of taking on much larger roles in the future.

We are reminded of a leadership article that appeared in the Delta Airlines Magazine over twenty years ago. The featured CEO of a Fortune 100 company focused on one primary message throughout that entire article. It was: "The single most important thing you will ever do as a senior executive is to decide who will be promoted." He went on to say that if you err in that decision that you will never know the extent of the damage that has been done to your organization. Why is that?

Whenever you promote the wrong person, the outstanding players that should have been promoted will gradually leave the organization. They won't bolt out the door overnight, but they will leave nonetheless and they will rarely tell you the real reason they are leaving. Secondly, in addition to losing the ones who should've been promoted, the company sends a very strong message whenever it promotes people. It is telling everyone in the company the type of behavior that gets rewarded around here. If we promote the wrong people, then we are reinforcing the wrong kind of behavior in the eyes of the management organization. What does this do? Quite simply, people who admire/respect the type of executive that should've been promoted begin to reassess their long-term interest in the organization. Then when their "hero" leaves the company, they may choose to follow shortly thereafter.

So, in our role as executive search consultants, we are privileged to participate in the decision which leads up to the critical decision of "promoting the right people." And that is the decision to build an executive team with world class talent. The truly great executive doesn't just "make do" with the talent he/she was dealt. They make sure that they have superior talent in all key positions. Promoting from within is great but is not the right thing to do when the required skills are not present in the organization. That's when outside recruiting is the right thing to do. Sometimes the initial reaction to outside recruiting is disappointment that the company doesn't always promote from within. But, if we recruit the right mix of talent and cultural fit, then the new leaders typically have little trouble helping the former doubters understand why the company chose to go outside.

At The Ansley Consulting Group, we are most inspired when we are working for the type of leaders who want us to recruit the absolute best "athletes". They tell us to bring them the very best talent and that if they want them bad enough that they will wrap the appropriate position around them. This is particularly fun to sell to the candidates, because we know that our client is really thinking about long-term advancement opportunities for everyone he/she recruits. This type of leader makes the most of the dollars spent for executive recruiting. They do this by always striving to bring in the very best talent available and not just filling jobs exactly according to some arbitrary specification.