Headhunting Without Recruiters
July 23, 2007 | Filed Under Technology, Organization
As disclosed here; Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield is looking to take a step up and recruit a new CEO to replace himself.
Since Socialtext is a company that seeks to bring wikis to the enterprise, Mr. Mayfield is using the web to hunt the best head:
The ability to do this search openly is part of the great culture we have built at Socialtext. I’m going to transition to Chairman & President and focus on growing the top line with my external facing duties and drive corporate and product strategy. CEO 2.0 will bring a strong operations background and have a mandate to grow the bottom line. This is a dream job.
I’m just starting the search and you can help. We should be able to find the right person within our own strong network, so if you can make a strong recommendation please contact me through LinkedIn.
With the many networks available now, the long-standing assertion of executive recruiters about their “proprietary databases” filled with “exceedingly qualified candidates” rings a bit hollow.
If they can really find and pry “A” players out of good gigs that such people are always in, then headhunters may earn their 33-and-a-third. Those are few and far between; I had a staffer from one of the leading legal recruiters leave me a message last week to “call her if we need any lawyers.”
Talk about value added…
Interested parties can contact Mr. Mayfield through LinkedIn; although Denise Howell points out that some members of that network are migrating to Facebook.
Trying On Spinning Off
January 30, 2006 | Filed Under Organization, In the News
Wall Street can be good for the legal market. But it may not be always good for business.
A recent press report tracks the increasing popularity of large companies spinning off certain business units. This is ostensibly intended to “unlock shareholder value.” Companies such as Tyco and Viacom have these plans underway.
Many of these conglomerates were created through a steady diet of acquisitions during the heady days of the stock markets in the 1990s. At the time, I think I recall justifications like “synergy” or “growing earnings at 15%.”
I definitely recall that administrative functions like HR, finance and legal would allegedly be more efficient since the associated costs could be spread over a larger asset base. Ask someone who has been acquired, however, about getting allocations of parent company overheads, often in amounts that exceed these expenditures prior to closing the deal.
If large companies are slowing down the acquisition train, after the spin-offs will Wall Street look to small company IPOs to fill the deal flow gap?
Maybe not.
Professor Ribstein has recently noted that Sarbanes Oxley may be suppressing IPOs of start-up companies. Perhaps if an IPO is not the default exit strategy for the VC community, more companies will stay private longer, and focus on things like growing products to serve markets, rather than being a source for growing legal and investment banking fees.
Will any of this lead to changes in the VC process? Rick Segal has started just such a dialogue; Doc Searles, Dave Winer and Robert Scoble are chiming in.
Suze the Solo
January 12, 2006 | Filed Under Tactics, Organization
When you find out that a major public figure is really an army of one–you sit up and take notice.
The currrent issue of TIME magazine (with Jack Abramoff on the cover–finally without a hat!) has an interesting group of articles about health and medicine.
One article profiles financial guru Suze Orman, and describes how she ruthlessly gets things done. This article is more of a sidebar to another one that notes some of the perils of multitasking.
This excerpt first caught my eye:
Sure, Orman has the usual battery of electronic devices–in fact, she runs a paperless office but has strict rules for using her gadgets. “When I am writing, I don’t answer phones. I don’t care what else is going on,” she says. She has a cell phone but never leaves it on. “You can’t call me. I only call you. I think you have to stop thinking you are at everyone else’s beck and call.” Silence, she adds, is critical. “You cannot complete your thoughts with everything ringing.”
Then my jaw dropped when Ms. Orman let the staffing model of her growing empire slip out:
The remarkable thing is that Orman is a one-woman show. She has no assistant, no permanent employees. “I’m the one who answers every one of my e-mails,” she says. (Usually with a terse yes, no or “done.”) When she hires people to work on a project, she insists they clear their schedules of other jobs: “I’m not saying they can’t multitask, just not on my time,” she explains. “The people who multitask, I think, do everything to mediocrity at best. While they are getting a lot done, they are getting it done in such an inefficient way that they usually have to do it again.” Orman says she never misses a deadline or needs a do-over. “Once I’ve written an article, it is done.”
Any lawyer reading this would quickly see the obstacles to adopting these tactics in the practice of law. Elsewhere in the article, she mentions that she generally does not respond to email or voicemail messages while on the road. Our clients might not like this–on the other hand, if things were being handled properly, they might be impressed. After all, they’d know we weren’t billing portal-to-portal.
But I really admire two things. One is Ms. Orman’s single-minded focus on the current task at hand. I need to carve out some time every day to do this. The only way I have done this recently is to duck into an unused office in a remote corner of my building for a few minutes once a week and scan my project list before I am discovered.
The other thing I admire is the way Ms. Orman responds to emails. Who among us wouldn’t appreciate that sort of response? It would stand out in a world of “reply all” messages that don’t merely transmit or request information. Rather, they are ongoing chronicles of a peron’s work “life story.”
If Suze Orman can find a way to focus despite constant distractions–do I really have an excuse?
I think her response might be:
no.
The Strategic Value of Legal
December 15, 2005 | Filed Under Tactics, Organization
The corporate legal department as a strategic weapon?
Harvard Business School Professor Constance Bagley thinks so. In a recent interview in HBS Working Knowledge, Professor Bagley argues that companies should proactively use the law, and by extension, their in-house lawyers.
Professor Bagley’s interview coincides with her recently published book, “Winning Legally: How Managers Can Use the Law to Create Value, Marshal Resources, and Manage Risk.”
The Professor notes that management, up to the CEO, needs to understand the legal dimensions of operating the modern business. In addition, she has some thoughts on the lawyer’s role as well:
“Lawyers advising firms or acting as in-house counsel need to learn enough about the general practice of management that they can communicate effectively with the management team. A lawyer who can’t read an income statement or understand the rudiments of strategy is far less able to help the non-lawyers on the team consider alternate goals or ways of achieving them.
“Our law schools need to do more in this area by offering courses in accounting, internal controls, and strategy. They are as important for a business lawyer as courses in civil procedure and evidence are to litigators. Practicing lawyers need to read the business press more widely and take advantage of executive education opportunities to increase their business acumen.”
I find Professor Bagley’s comments about law schools in this context particularly noteworthy. The Professor is in the minority of law professors in that she has experience in a corporate private practice (with the law firm Bingham McCutchen). Most law schools have nothing like a “corporate practice” class akin to trial practice or moot court.
The entire interview is definitely worth a close reading. I’m going issue a rev. 2.0 of my list for Santa to include Professor Bagley’s book (that move may bump this from the list–darn).
Any effective use of law as a strategic weapon would require alignment between in-house and outside counsel. Doing this effectively under the reigning billable hour model is a perennial challenge for today’s general counsel. Tomorrow, an interview with a leader behind a new initiative that applies technology to this challenge in an innovative and cost-effective manner when the Wired GC again goes…
Beyond Disaster Recovery
August 31, 2005 | Filed Under Organization, In the News
You can’t bear to watch the coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But you can’t turn it off, either.
The first thing we are taught to do is to pull out our disaster recovery plan, notify key people, and set up our command center. We either convene at our corporate headquarters or at a company facility some 150 miles away. In the case of businesses in the Gulf Coast area, the HQ may no longer exist, or you can’t get to it, and you probably can’t get anywhere else, either. But you already would have found out that you can’t call anyone anyway. Even the first response authorities are having trouble communicating.
Some businesses, including a law firm profiled here, are making plans for a long-term relocation to Baton Rouge because of the storm. One law firm was lucky in finding that client records were safe. DuPont is dealing with a chemical plant that suffered a direct hit (and was days earlier found to be the source of a toxic tort claim).
The ABA is pledging to help, and says it will have a listing of resources from FEMA on it’s website “in the coming days.” Well, I’ll save them the effort. The FEMA information page is right here.
I’m increasing my Monday donation to the American Red Cross, but even that seems a drop in the bucket.
Rather than provide links to “helpful disaster recovery resources,” it seems more appropriate to state the obvious. Few predicted this level of devastation. They knew it was a risk (you live near the ocean in the South, after all), and thought they had safeguards (e.g., the levees and escape routes), but if anyone told people how bad it could really be, few would have believed it.
The paradigm hasn’t shifted, it was washed away.
When there is looting in the streets, what’s a business to do? And whom does the Governor normally call out to restore order? Correct. And where are they? Exactly.
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