RETAINED EXECUTIVE SEARCH FIRM, LEADERSHIP ADVISORY SERVICES, AND INTERIM LEADERSHIP & PROJECT CONSULTING

By Rob Andrews with italicized content from Julia Lee Cunningham, Laura Sonday, and Sue Ashford’s Harvard Business Review article published on September 5, 2022 Studies have shown that high potential employees often contribute 5 – 15X more to the bottom line than an average employee. Just one high potential employee can be the catalyst that takes an organization of 10,000 employees from worst to first. In today’s blog, we explore the conundrum around identifying and developing high potential employees and why it could make all the difference in your organization….”

By Rob Andrews The number of organizations with strong, healthy peak performance cultures I’ve seen deteriorate over the four decades I’ve been paying attention is staggering. The first exceptional culture I saw disintegrate before my very eyes was the Safeway Houston Division for which I managed one of its highest volume stores. For eight years, at age 24, I had been a part of an organization which had grown from 3 stores to 91 and from less than one percent of its market to a commanding 23%. We were the…”

By Rob Andrews with contributions from Bob Aylward, former CEO of Quiddity Engineering Eleven years ago, I concluded that there are nine principles at work in organizations that perform at the very top of their sectors. One of these nine is cost leadership. Peak performers eliminate as much cost as possible without affecting the customer and employee experiences. Southwest Airlines, FedEx, Quiddity Engineering, H-E-B, QuikTrip, Mustang Engineering, and Nordstrom are extremely proficient at removing costs from the supply chain, reducing building costs, and limiting employee turnover, to name just a…”

By Rob Andrews with italicized content from Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report Gallup’s 2023 report featuring annual findings from the world’s largest ongoing study of the employee experience is rife with actionable data for leaders who are serious about building peak performance cultures. According to this year’s numbers, Gallup estimates that low employee engagement comes with a cost of $8.8 trillion (9% of global GDP) to global businesses. So, what can leaders do today to potentially save the world? Gallup has one clear answer: Change the way…”

  By Rob Andrews with italicized content from the book The Fearless Organization by Dr. Amy C. Edmondson Safe and Sound Jim Hackett, arguably the best CEO Anadarko has ever had, told me that every time he started working with a new team, he made sure there was at least one person in the group who would disagree with him. Speaking up is easier said than done. There’s no switch to flip that will instantaneously turn an organization accustomed to silence and fear into one where people speak candidly. Instead,…”

By Rob Andrews with italicized content from the book The Fearless Organization by Dr. Amy C. Edmondson On my sixteenth birthday, I went to work for Safeway Stores Inc. It was a brand-new division with only three open stores. Eight years later, our eighty-five Houston and Austin area stores had a commanding market share and ran like a finely tuned Swiss watch. We were one of the most successful divisions in the company’s sixty-three-year history. One year later, we had lost forty of eighty-five store managers and four of eight…”

By Rob Andrews This week’s post is in response to one of my clients who asked me to write a piece on my personal history and views on the art, science, and practice of retained executive search consulting. Writing a 275-page book on the subject was a lot of work but not difficult. A three-page blog post is much more daunting so here is my best shot. I went to work in search at age 24 on March 3, 1979, for a man named Larry Gladstone. Larry was a 47-year-old…”

By Rob Andrews with italicized content from the book Your Hidden Superpowers by Becca North, Ph.D. Dr. Becca North is a researcher, author, and professor who teaches the opening course at The University of Texas at Austin’s MA in Human Dimensions of Organizations program, in which I will be a student over the next 17 months. Wanting to prepare, I purchased North’s book with the intention of skimming it to get a feel for what her course might be like. After reading a dozen pages or so, I couldn’t put…”

By Rob Andrews with italicized content from Netflix To avoid the rigidity of over-specialization and avoid the chaos of growth while retaining freedom, we work to have as simple a business as we can given our growth ambitions and to keep employee excellence rising. We work to have a company of self-disciplined people who discover and fix issues without being told to do so. We are dedicated to increasing employee freedom to fight the python of process. Some examples of how we operate with unusual amounts of freedom are: We share…”

  By Rob Andrews with italicized content from Netflix Dream Team A dream team is one in which all your colleagues are extraordinary at what they do and are highly effective collaborators. The value and satisfaction of being on a dream team is tremendous. Our version of the great workplace is not sushi lunches, great gyms, fancy offices, or frequent parties. Our version of the great workplace is a dream team in pursuit of ambitious common goals, for which we spend heavily. It is on such a team that you learn the…”