Articles Archives

Who is your Steve Jobs?

Posted on September 9, 2023September 9, 2023 by JMJ Phillip

This article is not just about Steve Jobs, Apple Fans or even those in Technology. This is for anyone that owns, manages or sits on the board of a company within any sector. Through our executive search firm we are often sitting down with the executive team or some of the board of directors and we prefer to have candid, direct, to the point conversations about their executive leadership.

One question we often ask is: Who is your Steve Jobs?

We are often met with chatter, looks of deep thought and the oh so common, “I don’t have an answer for you”. This is a question the JMJ Phillip Founders have come to ask as they have formulated an opinion that most companies need a visionary, someone with skin in the game above and beyond compensation, stock options or willingness to impress the shareholders.

We are talking about a Steve Jobs in the sense of, who has an emotional attachment to your business? If you cut one of the founders of JMJ Phillip they would bleed JMJ Phillip Blue as Steve Jobs would Apple White. We are talking about the kind of people that cannot shut their brain off at night, they go to bed and wake up with ideas, endless ideas that can and will transform your business. The ideas that solve problems, that are innovative or that can drive sales to unimaginable levels.

We see a lot of companies that have made really bad hires by bringing on an executive that had an operational management mindset which leaves revenues flat or even going in reverse. At this level money is a topic of discussion but not always the key motivator for the person you really want or need. Someone at this level is likely already independently wealthy, they don’t wake up in the morning driven by a salary if you’re seeking the right person.

Our founders have noticed something while attending startup conferences and groups while looking for companies to invest in. The room is filled with people of all ages, from the 20-year-old young gun seeking seed capital to the mid 40’s ex-corporate executive looking for Series A Capital, to those in their 50’s and 60’s looking to invest because they have a passion to be a part of something.

So when looking for your Steve Jobs the one key thing we like to hone in on is passion. A true passion to want to make something their own, a passion for continuous improvement, to make or build something better, to grow something because they can, and want to, not because they have to. The is the most difficult thing for any company to find that does not have a founder as their visionary who has an emotional attachment to the business.

Howard Schultz had to come back as Starbucks CEO in 2008 because he is the one that had the most passion about the business, it wasn’t about his own pocket book. Schultz has the level of emotional involvement that no one else had, to the point of getting pissed off that the new breakfast sandwiches overpowered the smell of their core product, coffee. These are things most people brought in to manage don’t see, they are not tied to a company in the way a founder is.

But that is the hardest part of the search; you may never find anyone that will take something personally as a founder does such as Steve Jobs or Howard Schultz. But you can find someone that has a passion to make something their own and run with it. As we have seen at the startup conferences these people do exist and thankfully that pool of creative and high passion minds continues to grow. Finding the person with the entrepreneurial spirit, know-how and passion to get the job done is the hard part.

At JMJ Phillip, the founders’ philosophy, as they have grown their business units, is to keep each company small and boutique. When we hire someone to run a business unit we choose someone that has entrepreneurial spirit, is a free thinker, high energy type that also has the experience or education to be successful at our company.

JMJ Phillip isn’t a franchise, it was developed from the ground up with innovative thinking and a passion to do better business. We also are not a firm doing a couple hundred million in revenue where the executives come and go.

The founders are part of everyday business and consult on all executive searches -as who better to do so? They are the ones doing business on their name and understand better than anyone that a true visionary with a founders mentality can take your business to the next level.

JMJ Phillip Featured on Career Builder

Posted on September 9, 2023September 9, 2023 by JMJ Phillip

Read a quote from our Vice President of Business Development Jim Thompson on 5 Great Perks for Retaining Your Employees. Based on the culture at JMJ Phillip Group Jim recommends a fun environment: including Family Guy and free lunches.

“Internally, we try to buy lunch a couple days a week and let different people choose where we are eating. You will find many of us, executives to associates, all eating at the same table and cracking jokes about Family Guy. Try to make the environment fun and family-like as no one wants to work in a sweatshop.”

– Jim Thompson, JMJ Phillip

An Inch Deep and a Mile Wide: An Executive Search Perspective on the Problem of Recruiting today’s Top Leaders.

Posted on September 9, 2023September 9, 2023 by JMJ Phillip

As Executive Search Consultants our clients rely on us to make recommendations on hiring the best and filtering out the mediocre. A common misconception is that a recruiting firms purpose is to forward 20 resumes hoping the spray and pray method works but that thought comes and goes quickly when you’re hiring an Executive Search Consultant to not only allure an Executive that wouldn’t normally give you the time of the day, but to also force rank the true top seeded leaders limiting the exposure of making a bad decision.

As part of our vetting process for Executives, their career information and interview details are shared amongst the Executive Search Team along with the input from the founding partners of JMJ Phillip whom are considered some of the top talent and business evaluators in the country. The round table discussions of each candidate often begins with the comment, “An Inch Deep and a Mile Wide”. Below we will tell you more why this has become more of a problem for corporations seeking new leaders in recent years.

What we want to know is what happened to the CEO \COO \ SVP \VP \ Director that was not only well rounded but could also dive into details with a keen understanding of those topics? It seems with the recent explosion of the “MBA” the educational process may have left us with some book savvy leaders but they often lack the focus or know-how to tackle a multitude of complex problems. Many of the future Executives can scratch the surface of a thousand topics but are a master of none. Sure, maybe your organization is large enough to hire 1,000 experts to dig deeper, but what if you don’t have that luxury?

As we conduct a search and weed out the mediocre, we constantly strive to see through the BS and find the leaders that know how to ask the right questions so they can get the information they need to make the correct decision. It’s not the easiest thing to do, let me tell you, as every college graduate in the last 15 years seems to think “I can run the company just by looking at the numbers”. And, although that statement can be true, is it that type of thinking that has made Google or Toyota so successful?

To run the company by the numbers thinking has sunk more than a few companies as we all know and the pool of great leaders is shrinking. To use our manufacturing background as an example, some of the best placements we ever made were of Executives that had an engineering background starting off in R&D and moved their way up to managing a plant and on to becoming the COO\CEO. They could walk out on the floor and see the problems, ask the right questions and understand causality.

The person we were often replacing is someone that was a business major and was “taught” to run a company without ever really understanding the end to end operations. What they did know was a little sales, a little marketing, a little purchasing, a little plant management and so on. In our opinion that works great when running a Subway Franchise, but not so great when running a $200MM Manufacturing Company.

Just the little things you learn along the way allow you to be a better leader. How many engineers recall the sales team making promises to customers which resulted in you staying until 6pm every night trying to get a product designed or the plant manager that had to open a window in the production schedule to get the hot job though? All invaluable lessons because these are just some of the things you deal with as a leader.

Now everyone is different. There are the MBA types out there that will blow your socks off, the truly amazing top 5% types so we are not discounting them. In the end if our clients are not looking to tackle a certain problem where an executive needs to focus solely on let’s say, driving sales, the balance are seeking someone that can still roll their sleeves up and solve problems, drive efficiency and contribute to profitable ideas directly.

So what’s the “tell” on whether or not you’re about to hire the Inch Deep, Mile Wide type? Our philosophy is if they talk about constantly referring to others as the doer you may want to think twice. We put an immense amount of pressure on prospective candidates to find out what they accomplished, not what they had others accomplish. We don’t accept politician answers where answers are diverted, we will repeat the question until we get the information we need. It’s not the most pleasant way to do business day in and day out but in the end our clients get to make a great hire and there is a great sense of pride in that throughout our entire team.

Why great Executive Recruiters are your own personal ICBM

Posted on September 9, 2023September 9, 2023 by JMJ Phillip

The giveaway that you are working with a great executive recruiter is by calling them a headhunter and see how they react. Some have tried to change the image and no longer like the term ‘headhunter’, but we tend to embrace it.

Many prefer the term “executive search consultant” these days and we are fine with that as well, it really tells a little more about what we do. It comes down to the mindset of the recruiter and their firm, and at JMJ Phillip we have no delusions about what we do for a living and that is attacking the market, digging into your competitors and delivering you top seeded talent.

We are constantly striving to educate businesses on how we can assist them. We have said many times in the past that our value isn’t in finding the paper. You have access to databases, LinkedIn, job boards and even referrals just as we do. So that brings up the question , why do we even exist?

The simplest way we can describe it is that we really are your own personal ICBM where we dispatch the target (such as a competitor) with great accuracy. From clients giving us a name to go after to sell and close, to a full on search of North America’s top executives, we pick up the phone, get the plane, show up to the front door, aggressively pursue and oppose our will on the targets so you get the candidates that your company needs to stay on top.

We have a thousand stories of a company having a resume in their hand and they couldn’t allure the candidate or negotiate a package where both parties were happy. Regardless where you are at in the process, if you feel there is a chance you’re not going to be able to wrap the candidate up please give us a call to discuss how we can change your hiring processes and increase your ability to attain top 5% candidates.

In the next 5 years as the boomers retire there will be a giant shift in the workforce, turnover rates are going to increase and companies will be battling for a handful of top seeded candidates. Those battles are not going to be won with offering more money and even then, can you afford to “buy” candidates in the long term?

As the markets become ultra-competitive you need someone on your side, with the tactical ability to identify a target and have the know-how, sales ability and negotiation skills to walk the deal through the door otherwise you end up with the bottom of the talent pool.

Owning Your Supply Chain – Lessons From Chipotle Grill’s Antibiotic-Free Beef Dilemma

Posted on September 9, 2023September 9, 2023 by JMJ Phillip

Studying the industrial revolution you will find many of the titans of industry relied only on themselves. Carnegie likely didn’t know the term supply chain management, nor did he need an acronym to help him understand the concept. Over 100 years ago these industry magnates were breaking ground on value chain engineering because it simply made sense, not because they learned about it at the latest supply chain seminar. The thought wasn’t about what is easier, it was about control. And to control and own your supply chain meant steady growth with less risk.

Which brings us to the modern day when everything you can think of is outsourced and completely dependent on another company in the supply chain. What we learned a century ago was that vertical integration wasn’t a bad thing. For all the time and effort we put into international sourcing teams, supplier development, and supply chain management on top of all the costs associated with every mere hiccup, does it make more sense for you to own your supply chain?

For you Chipotle fans, every time you walk into the restaurant you’re slapped in the face with the sign touting all the feel good mantras of “Never Given Hormones,” “Naturally Raised,” and “Food With Integrity.” They have spent all these years hoarding brand equity based on the simple concept of if you eat here, you are eating healthy food and it’s worth the money. But now we are at a tipping point. The supply of antibiotic-free beef cannot support their demand. While they are a big enough corporation likely to outbid everyone else to increase their supply, this would also translate to higher food prices, which the market may not support.

So do you raise the prices and hope that people switch to chicken or dig deeper into their wallets? Or just say, ‘hey, we cannot get enough beef on the open market, so we are going to be transparent and say here is our issue and we may have to use some different category of beef.’ We know which one they chose to do….

But what if that never had to happen? What if Chipotle owned their entire supply chain? As part of a strategic plan 5 years ago, could they have started buying farms and using demand planning to forecast their own supply needs? They wouldn’t have to bid on the open market; in fact, they could operate completely in their own bubble. Their upstream farm operations wouldn’t have to make money, they would only have to break even and ensure a consistent and adequate supply of products to support Chipotle’s operations.

Easier said than done! For the smaller companies or regional companies, it may be a tall task. For a nearly $3B company looking to dominate the globe with their made to order, high quality food with integrity, did it make sense to drain your brand’s value because you didn’t own enough of your supply chain?

Top 2012 Executive Career Search Mistakes

Posted on September 9, 2023September 9, 2023 by JMJ Phillip

The JMJ Phillip Retained Search Division has compiled a list of the 2012 worst mistakes witnessed during an executive career search. While this list only demonstrates a few key points, these are often the easiest to fix if a candidate takes the time to properly prepare for an interview prior to making decisions and taking action. Statistics illustrate if a candidate is not receiving an offer for every three interviews they should take a step back and consider what went wrong by doing a personal assessment. This has been shown to result in a far more successful career search.

1. Companies know how smart you are: The fatal mistake that tops the 2012 list is the “let me show you how smart I am” executive. When interviewing with prospective companies take into consideration that if you made it to the interview, the company already thinks highly of you. While showing a certain level of confidence is important, remember you have to walk a fine line not to become “the smartest guy in the room.” When the executive team or board hiring committee is evaluating someone, they are seeking extremely intelligent professionals whom others will want to work with. If you pull out your fifty “really important” questions on the first interview there is a good chance you will not be invited back for a second interview. No one likes a ‘Know-it-All’. It is also not necessary to point out that you went to a top 25 graduate school; they know this already and may have even chosen to bring you in because of it.

2. Price gouging: People like to do business with those they can trust. There have been many instances this year where JMJ Phillip has experienced a candidate tell the executive search consultant, or even fill out an employment application with a desired salary amount, but after an interview they ask for a considerable amount more. While this is understandable when the job requirements or situation changes, it is not an acceptable reason when a candidate feels they can get a substantially larger compensation package. This usually happens pre-offer and at some point during the first or second interview once the company has displayed great interest in onboarding the candidate. Once the candidate finds out the company is really interested, all of a sudden they are asking for 20-30% more than they originally asked for. JMJ Phillip has found no cases in 2012 where this ended up in a successful hire.

Being difficult: Most companies understand an executive’s busy schedule. However, things go south when a company goes out of their way to accommodate a busy executive and they either cancel at the last minute or constantly reschedule. Once the company decides not to pursue the candidate suddenly the candidate wants to “make things work.” At that point it is too late. In 2012 companies have become very picky on who they decide to pursue. The lack of willingness to make an interview happen can often be taken as reluctance to make a career change or worse, a lack of interest in their company.

4. Honesty: The fall out of the Yahoo CEO being ousted for questionable items on his resume introduced companies picking over career histories with a fine tooth comb. You can bet a company is going to do exhaustive background checks, income verification, education verification and job tenure verification. Do not say you have a degree if you are four credits away from having one. It is equally inappropriate to say you only need fifteen credits to complete a degree if you need sixty. Also, be precise with your job dates. Stretching job dates to fill voids will be caught and brings integrity into question.

5. Lack of energy: If you have the title of Director or above, people see you as a leader. If you are a leader the last thing the hiring committee wants to see is lethargy. In 2012, the markets continue to become more and more competitive leaving no time for a low energy executive. Many executives are being brought in as change agents, and with change the company needs someone with energy, excitement, and motivation. We often joke pre-interview and tell candidates to stop and get a Red Bull or a Quad Americano as a way of saying “show them you are bringing some energy to their organization.” Lack of energy and excitement is also taken as a sign of someone not being interested in a position or company which is extremely visceral to the executive hiring committee.

Technology Fatigue and Mid-Career IT Professionals

Posted on September 9, 2023September 9, 2023 by JMJ Phillip

The executive recruiters were discussing an article that is being written for our aggressive Executive Search Division about “Executive’s Falling off in their 40’s” which led us to another similar topic and phenomenon that our IT Recruiters often witness. That topic happened to be why companies have such a hard time finding seasoned IT Professionals that are in their Mid-Career and beyond, something our technology recruiters experience daily as well.

It’s in plain sight that companies are hiring younger these days not only because of the need for fresh ideas but it’s also cost effective. But when it’s time to hire a senior network engineer or application developer the pool of high quality candidates dwindle quickly.

Since it is an active topic at JMJ Phillip I decided to ask one of the JMJ Phillip’s principals about his view on the topic.

Q. Why do we see the typical IT Professional Career Arc peak in the late 20’s early 30’s when typically it is the 30’s and beyond when you truly become an expert at something?

A. Technology fatigue, it is pretty much that simple. When I first started in IT I bought a 550 page Novell CNA book on Friday, read it twice over the weekend and went and sat (passed) the exam on Monday. Multiply that by the countless other certifications and sooner or later your burnt out.

Certs are not for everyone, in fact it was a lot of undue stress when I think about it, but let’s take that out of the equation. Even without the certifications you still had to deal with constantly changing technology. Several times a year you’re sitting down with a Sybex book the size of a smart car and your trying to keep up with all the new software, network devices, application, security and this never stops.

And it really never stops. You’re constantly in acronym hell for the rest of your life and it’s not like reading a business book on how to be a better manager, it’s more like taking organic chem over and over again. Add in the fact that people trade in their weeknights of reading technical books for spending time with their spouse and kids and all of a sudden you have an amazing IT Professional that is no longer on top of their game.

As an example, If you’re a Buyer or Cost Accountant your game doesn’t change a whole lot over 5 years. If a Systems Engineer walked away for 5 years and tried to step back into the role they wouldn’t know where to start. The continuing education aspect of Information Technology is grossly overlooked.

Technology isn’t going to slow down and the amount of new information IT Professionals are going to have to retain and apply is only going to grow so Technology Fatigue is going to continue to be an issue. Take a look around team and find those that have become uninspired and take a proactive approach to encourage them to keep learning and look for ways to keep them content before you have to give us a call to replace them.

Organizational Ambidexterity in Competitive Markets

Posted on September 9, 2023September 9, 2023 by JMJ Phillip

As we continue to grow at a rapid pace across many brands, we are always looking for new ways to be innovative even though we get lumped into a sector where innovation is stagnant: Professional Services and Management Consulting. However, we have found, even for our executive search firm, that we are able to push the limits, adapt to the new employment markets and really learn the causality of business prosperity or failure from a workforce perspective.

Over the years we have pushed an Organizational Ambidexterity Model and strategy across all of our companies as we knew one thing for sure, we didn’t want to be the company that failed to adapt to the rapidly changing world. Our culture instills an intrinsic motivation and passion to learn and innovate and every day we have new extrinsic motivators reminding us not to become a dinosaur. You cannot turn on Bloomberg or CNBC and not hear about Best Buy struggles to re-strategize their business plan and somehow it seemed like Facebook went from being the cutting edge Pre-IPO to becoming a turnaround situation within 24 hours of the shares hitting the market. Everywhere around us it seems that “nothing can be done the old way anymore.”

The one consistent fatal mistake we see over and over again from a business and workforce viewpoint, is waiting too long to take action and even if they try, they didn’t come strong enough. With time you can fix many things, but we all know most difficult problems within any reasonably sized organization often takes a lot of time and money. Best Buy as an example simply waited too long and did not make the strong moves they needed to. An Organizational Ambidextrous company would have never let their online presence stay the way Best Buy did and this is coming from a customer who was thinking, “hey I want to spend money here, get it together already!”

Developing Organizational Ambidexterity is about as easy as instituting change, which as we know in the corporate world isn’t the easiest thing to do. How do you get your people to stay planted and continue doing your core business the way it needs to be done and what your customers expect, while driving innovation to do business the new way? Not everyone is clairvoyant , we all wish we could simply make our workforce read Steve Jobs’ biography so they can become visionaries too but it just isn’t that easy.

Here are some of the actions we took across all of the JMJ Phillip Companies:

One positive thing came out of Enron and that was the slogan, “Ask Why”. Having your workforce challenge the way you do things can have a lot of positive outcomes. If they cannot provide a better way to do business then you keep it the same until someone does.

Failure is a strategy. If you are not trying new ideas and failing, then you simply are not pushing the limits. We cannot recall many companies that played it safe for 50 years who are still market leaders today.
Create a pitch day that you do two to four times a year. Lay down the gauntlet to your workers and challenge them to come up with a new business plan, new division, new product, new service or whatever it may be that correlates to your business. Set it up like a venture capital pitch day and have each employee with a well thought out and vetted idea pitch the rest of the company. This will encourage others to step up and will also spark ideas within the group since great ideas often stem from another idea.

With all of our companies being boutique and often bidding against large multiple, hundred million dollar firms we are always asked from the executives and board hiring committee: Why JMJ Phillip over your much larger competitors?

The shortest answer is our Organizational Ambidextrous culture, but that does not sound so amazing when trying to sell your company in a boardroom full of people.

The long answer is that we are a group of small companies and push every single day to understand the workforce changes we are experiencing culturally and through technology. We work hard to understand the ever evolving business models of tomorrow and strive to push things to the limit when partnering with our customers to develop a workforce to make them become the market leader.

We never will be, nor do we want to be the large, 50 year old company that has been “doing things this way for years”. Every day we move forward, continue to be quick on our feet and not only keep up with the changes, but set some trends ourselves.

We believe every company is going to have to follow this model to be competitive in the future. We are proud to say we have been doing it for years.

Understanding seasonal recruiting cycles and candidate flow

Posted on September 9, 2023September 9, 2023 by JMJ Phillip

It is mid-summer and this time of the year our executive search consultants are often battered with emails and phone calls on a daily basis asking why candidate flow is not booming. The scenario starts with a new order coming in on Monday and by Friday when all of our executive recruiting account managers do their status calls, the questions start arriving on why the client hasn’t seen 10+ resumes yet.

Summer recruiting is one of the most difficult times to get great candidate flow and it’s a national problem. By the end of May people have mentally checked out, all they can think about is traveling, boating, jumping in their RV’s, camping, the kids are out of school, family reunions and so on. Targeting content passive candidates results in not much progress and even the most unhappiest of currently employed active candidates do not want to risk losing their planned vacations to start a new position.

What does that leave you with? Targeting those that are unemployed, have a need and also have had the free time to get their vacations out of the way. If you’re starting a search between May and August and need someone to start ASAP your best chance is to find a highly qualified unemployed candidate, the second chance is hoping the search team comes across some candidates without many plans.

This same problem also plagues the resume writing industry which historically peaks at the end of March and demand falls quickly. With resume writing sales dropping off drastically until mid-August when sales will spike dramatically. But don’t get too excited, people are buying resumes at that time to get ready to make a move, they’re not ready to make a career change just yet and we won’t start seeing the unsolicited resume submittals increase until after Labor Day.

We make placements every month so it’s not to say you cannot make a hire in the summer, we just wanted to share some of our experiences and historical data about the cyclical nature of seasonal hiring. We always suggest to clients to start their searches before the end of winter or after school starts if they can plan it that way. Naturally, when someone leaves your company they’re not operating on your watch so you have no choice, but depending on the time of the year you now know what you’re up against.

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