John Traynor wins Salmagundi Medal

It is a real pleasure to write today's Blog. While I am focused on my search business it is always great to be able to enjoy another interesting activity. My friend of many years, John C. Traynor, was last night's recipient of the Salmagundi Club "President's Medal". This medal is awarded to a member of the club that has made significant contributions to the field of fine art and to the Salmagundi community of artists. Some of America's best known artists have belonged to the club of the many decades of its existence. John is an oil painter in the tradition of the old masters. He is from Mendham NJ and received his first training in fine art under the tuteledge of Fr Beatus Lucey, OSB at Delbarton School in Morristown. Since those early days he has gone on to become one of our country's best know painters. He paints portraits, landscapes, still lifes as well as large scale murals.

My daughter, Kendall and I were invited guests at last night's proceedings. The Salmagundi Club is located at 47 Fifth Avenue near Greenwich Village. It was founded back in the 1870's and is a historic location filled with original art contributed by its many famous members over the decades. John has a real appreciation for the history of his field so, he understands that it is his role to both win commissions and sell paintings as well as contribute generously to various institutions that have nurtured him and his career. Included in today's blog are pictures of John and his work that I took this past summer and pictures of his art work. Congratulations to John and his family and especially to his wonderful wife, Sara.

It is a pleasure to share this with all of you. Congratulations, John....Keep up the great work, John.

Leadership Forum at William Paterson University

As some of you may know, I am a member of the Dean's Advisory Board for the Cotsakos School of Business at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ. The school is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Business Schools (AACSB) a very prestigious recognition for the school. The Cotsakos School of Business is led by Dean Sam Basu. Dean Basu wants to grow & develop the school and so, in a recent meeting, we talked about the idea of creating a Leadership Forum. The purpose of the Forum is to have a steady stream of accomplished individuals come before the students and impart helpful information to them about their career accomplishments. I will be the "host", asking questions of the "guest" leader. I will try to draw out interesting anecdotes and helpful information from the guest leader to help the students learn more about what it takes to effectively lead.

Our first Leadership Forum will be held on December 1. Although the event will not be open to the public, we expect to have a few VIP guests on hand to listen to the conversation I will have with Dr Bami Bastani. Bami is a fascinating person. He came to America from Iran in the mid 1970's to get his college degree and rose to become CEO of Anadigics, (AN: NASDAQ) a supplier of computer chips for the cellular telephon business. This is going to be fun because Bami's story is so interesting. The students will get plenty of opportunity to ask Bami questions after the initial conversation with me.

Who knows how this Forum will benefit a future leader sitting in the audience that night? That is another key aspect of what makes the Forum so interesting.

I will be writing more about the Leadership Forum in future blogs.

I hope is going well with you and invite your comments or questions.

Warm regards
Keith

November 2, 2010

Today's blog is meant to help clients who are struggling with the question:

How can we improve our chances that we will be able to attract the right people for our organization when we conduct an executive search?

This is a key question for any hiring executive or search committee to consider before launching a search. Here is the key question to try to answer:

What do we expect the hired candidate to accomplish by when and how will his or her endeavors help to drive the enterprise forward?

All senior level executives know many---many people, so, identifying a slate of potentially qualified candidates for any senior level assignment is usually not much of a problem---particularly in today's economic climate! The challenge is in developing a group of qualfied candidates, motivated to accept your offer, who have the proven problem solving experience, skill sets, personality/style that will help achieve the key objectives of the organization. For example; are you trying to increase top line revenue by 15% in your company---or improve the fund raising success in your University? These goals need to be specified along with your delivery time line. Doing this clarifies expectations and allows you to explore with the candidate how he or she accomplished similar goals in previous positions. Listing responsibilities is not enough---nor is producing a position spec with an abundance of images and detail about the organization; this information is helpful and important to the overall presentation but the critical information from the perspective of a well qualified candidate is a clear summary of what you and your colleagues expect him or her to accomplish/by when: the KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (KPIs).

We know that when the client and the well qualified candidate are both clear on the KPIs of the role before reaching agreement on the hire, the chances that both parties are going to be happy over the long run is definitely much better. When the search firm works with the client to take the time to spell out and delve into the KPIs during the interviewing process, the average length of tenure for the hired candidate tends to increase---a key metric for the value of any executive search assignment.

If you would like to know more about how to do this in your organization ----pls reply to my BLOG or email me at kdk@kulpercompany.com

Wishing you all the best.

Warm regards,
Keith Kulper