CASE: AVON
Chief Technology Officer
The Situation
AVON, a $3.6b revenue cosmetics business, and the third biggest direct selling company in the world needed help. They had been working with one of the Big 5 firms for almost a year to try and recruit a Chief Technology Officer and were struggling to identify the right candidate. The requirements were changing at times due to the length of time the previous headhunting firm was working on this and (in short) it really just needed a fresh pair of eyes (who could also be a little more objective in forcing a set of requirements).
Our founder had recruited the incumbent Chief Information Officer in a previous life and she approached him to see if we could revitalise the search.
It was still a difficult brief on many levels. On one hand they wanted someone who could bring leadership and innovation around their core platforms strategy while also owning the architecture function that connected their reps to their ageing mainframe back-end systems for fulfilment. At the same time, the incumbent Chief Information Officer was hinting at retirement, and they saw this role as a key potential successor.
Lastly, they are also a company for women and placed particular emphasis on seeing a diverse shortlist.
The Opportunity
Baker operated as a highly decentralised set of businesses with no real central governance or business prioritisation for investment and consequently no ability to track ROI or find ways to innovate at scale. All of their business units operated largely independently of each other. The group wanted to create a more business centric IT capability, yet also a central oversight function, to collect and utilise data more effectively in order to manage their activities more strategically.
IT was very much seen as a reactive and tactical function, designed to underpin existing operational processes. There was very little strategic engagement with either the group business or within the key BUs.
Nothing was fundamentally broken with regards to systems or operational integrity, but the consensus of the Executive team was to try and hire a more forward thinking, engaging leader who would operate at a more strategic level within the business, building a clear picture of the future business needs and overseeing the integration of the existing IT estate.
While this was a recruiting exercise, the key objective was to spend time with the Executive team at Baker to establish what exactly it was they needed from IT, and what kind of leader they would respond to and accept as a peer on the executive board. Baker were also notoriously poor at ‘welcoming the new guy’, struggling to buy into senior leaders who were brought in from outside of the construction world and used to working in organisations with different cultures. We determined that Baker were looking for someone tough and strong-minded, but also patient and methodical. A down to earth leader, in touch with the operational side of the business and keen to spend time on the field, understanding needs and coming back with solutions. A good listener able to convince other members of the board to see the value of their ideas.
What made this interesting?
Working with AVON is always a pleasure. They are an amazing company, steeped in great values. They have been helping women manage their way out of impoverished positions for over 100 years. Our founder had worked with AVON for many years in his previous organisation and it was fun to reconnect and help with this mandate. It was also delicate as he knew the partner from the Big 5 firm that we were taking it over from and that required careful handling. The call also came in when our founder was on vacation, deep in the Tuscan countryside. What a start!
What made this challenging?
It was challenging to strike the right balance in candidates for this role. On the one hand, we needed to identify candidates with the capability and ambition to progress to a global CIO role in a short space of time, but on the other hand, the candidates could not be so ambitious or experienced that they were not interested in being the number 2 in the CTO role. The key to this search was to recognise which candidates had what it took to progress to the global CIO role but were not quite at that stage of their career yet.
The blend of CTO and CIO responsibilities required for this role also complicated the search, we had to look for a real all-rounder who could be held accountable for a range of IT and technology areas.
The Digital Board Process
From the very first call our aim is to set up as many stakeholder briefing calls as possible in order to develop a rounded understanding of the challenge and the profile we are looking for. In this case, we spoke with the hiring manager (CIO) and a number of her leadership team, including the HR Director (and Business Partner for Corporate functions). Following these initial conversations, we briefed our research team. Their process starts with defining our target list. In doing this, they needed to address a number of key elements:
Wide and varied experience- this role involved future-state architecture, strategy and planning, executive oversight of cybersecurity and strong technical expertise in infrastructure and application architecture.
Transformation- the CTO was expected to drive Avon’s considerable transformation efforts at the front end and the back end to enable them to compete with businesses with more modern technology models.
Executive level communication, collaboration and leadership skills to influence and lead effectively in a global matrix with the possibility of being promoted to global CIO within 2 years.
We developed a list of over 50 potential candidates, focusing exclusively on businesses that were either “internet first” or had made significant progress in direct to consumer digital. This was a global search but with the emphasis on the UK. Our first approach was to bring this brand to life, to explain the concept, the culture and of course the challenge attached to the role. From there, we measured candidates’ initial interest and suitability. We then began the first stage of Digital Board qualifications, holding 45-minute calls with a selection of candidates in order to assess: (1) reasons for interest, (2) fit to brief, (3) key achievements, (4) culture alignment and beyond.
A number of candidates then progressed to formal interviews. They met Bryan (our CEO and Founder) who conducted a deep- dive leadership and culture assessment, using our proprietary leadership diagnostic tool. Six of the interviewed candidates were shortlisted and recommended to the client.
As always, throughout the whole process, our research team continued to work on generating new candidates just in case anything went wrong with our shortlist.
Success Story
The successful candidate was a promising young woman with a number of years in technology leadership roles. She had enjoyed a rapid career progression and was clearly a rising star, yet she had retained a humble demeanour, appearing calm, authoritative and empathetic. While she was the least experienced candidate on the shortlist, she struck up tremendous rapport with all of the panel throughout the assessment process.
The candidate came across as a decisive leader who had worked on several complex change initiatives in her career at major companies in the travel and tourism and media industries. She boasted the range of expertise required to carry out the varied duties of the CTO and had particular experience in driving transformation.
Even though this search had been running for over a year, we were able to complete this in just over two months.