Achieving Potential and Preserving Mission

CHALLENGE

To assist a regional, faith-based healthcare system broaden and diversify its reach to potential highly qualified candidates to serve as Group Leader of Mission. Our challenge was to orchestrate a truly global search assignment to identify and evaluate candidates whose professional experience, leadership abilities and personal values aligned with the future objectives of our client and its mission-centered stakeholders.

ACTION

Having recently engaged in an exercise to better define and develop its unique organisational culture, our client engaged us to interact with its selection committee and establish the framework for a global mandate to engage candidates around the world.

Our team moved quickly to identify healthcare organisations whose size and mission-based strategy aligned with that of our client. Our research team identified candidates across Europe, in multiple Asia-Pacific countries, and in the United States and its work was complemented by a focused advertising campaign that yielded additional candidates for our review and assessment.

Working closely with the selection committee, we worked to narrow an initial roster of 75 potential candidates to a list of 28 candidates, basing our collective judgment not only on the potential cultural fit with our client but also the relevancy and immediacy of their experience working with similar healthcare enterprises. Our team conducted interviews and established a small, short-list of candidates who met the requirements of our search brief. Further, we vetted candidates whose commitment to driving improved health outcomes for patients balanced with their desire to preserve and protect our client's unique culture and employee value proposition.

Following in-depth, in-person interviews with our team and members of the client's selection committee, a group of six finalist candidates was narrowed to just two preferred finalists based on a consensus view of their leadership qualities and commitment to mission-based strategy implementation and decision-making.

Towards the planned conclusion of our search and consulting assignment, some changes within our client's management team led to a brief pause in our process and moved one of our two preferred candidates to contemplate other career options. Sensing that our candidate might accept another opportunity in a highly competitive market, we advised members of our selection committee to personally reach out to assure the individual that the changes within the client's management structure represented a real and unforeseen opportunity to lead. Further, our lead consultant provided timely guidance that led to the acceptance of our client's employment offer.

IMPACT

There are times in the growth cycle of any client organisation when things don't go according to even the most well-prepared succession plan. Such was the case as our team and our client's selection committee saw our progress interrupted by unforeseen circumstances that threatened to knock our process off track.

Our close alignment with selection committee members and the trust that was built during the conduct of this assignment enabled the kind of frank conversations that provided each party to engage with the preferred candidate in some new and unexpected ways.

It was this collaboration - informed by the governance insight of influential selection committee members as well as our lead consultant's view of the external healthcare marketplace - that made a successful conclusion possible. The candidate ultimately shared that it was this combination of inputs that led to the decision to forego other compelling opportunities and to accept our client's offer.

CLIENT PERSPECTIVE

Our client not only found a globally qualified leader to lead its Mission function, but also an adept, agile individual who, over time, became an example for its workforce and a guardian of patient rights and outcomes. The candidate excelled in this position and, four years later, was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of the institution.

Our client realised its short-term objectives by finding a leader uniquely attuned to how its Mission served as a foundation for providing service to patients and communities.