Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct, and Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent

With demands on leaders at an all-time high and executive tenure at a record low, executive search consulting is positioned to gain unprecedented influence over who makes it to the leadership table and who doesn't. But little has been known about this powerful, invisible force that operates at the epicenter of the war for senior talent and global competitiveness, until now. In this rich expose, Joseph McCool pulls back the curtain to reveal how senior management recruiters influence compensation, workplace diversity, high profile CEO succession, organizational performance, culture, profits, and the very definition of leadership. He trains his investigative journalist's eye on the growing influence of this elite band of management consultants to expose the recruitment practices and exploits of some of the country's leading businesses-from Avery Denison and the Campbell Soup Company to Disney. Deciding Who Leads makes a hard-line business case for taking control of the executive recruitment and hiring process, laying out the new leadership mandate, best practices for recruiting senior talent, strategic priorities for hiring organizations, and tactical advice for making the most of executive leadership recruiting and management succession. "Enter the secret world of executive search consulting and discover how this influential-but largely invisible-profession is charting the course of global business. Executive search expert Joseph Daniel McCool delivers a rich expose of the elite world of search consulting-the single most influential form of management consulting engaged by organizations-and its powerful impact on the future of organizational performance, culture, and profits. Deciding Who Leads offers a front-row seat from which to witness the high-stakes drama, victories, and missteps that characterize the executive search process amid what has become an intense, truly global competition for leadership talent." --Descripción del editor Noted by Fast Company magazine as a recruiting expert with headhunting guru wisdom, McCool takes readers inside the secret world of executive recruiters: the most influential and elite group of management consultants operating in business today