CASE: Nodes
Managing Director, UK & Middle East
The Situation
We were asked to recruit a UK and Middle East (UKME) Managing Director for Nodes, one of the fastest growing global digital consultancy organisations. The role was to lead the continuing growth of the region, from revenues of circa £5m expecting to reach £10-15 million per annum by 2021.
This opportunity stemmed as a natural evolution to the business in the UK and Middle East, with the incumbent Managing Director being promoted to a Global Commercial role, leaving the UKME business in need of a new leader tasked with motivating and leading the organisation through the next phase of growth.
The incumbent MD had brought significant rigour and discipline to client engagement and established proper metrics for growing the business. Consequently, the business was in good shape. It was not only a bigger business than it had been before, but projects were more strategic in nature and had a much greater impact on their clients’ business.
We had an established working relationship with Nodes, having been consulting with them for two years previously and having created their Board Advisory teams in both regions. However, we had never recruited directly for them, and this was our first executive search assignment with the organisation.
The Opportunity
The role was set to assume overall responsibilities for the management of the UK & ME business as well as sitting as part of the management team for the group. The MD was to be tasked with building, motivating and leading the teams in both regions to help achieve maximum performance and to meet current and future business targets. The role was also intended to be a focal point of communication for Nodes UKME, prioritising business opportunities and product initiatives.
Furthermore, Nodes worked on a variety of global projects and the UKME Managing Director role was set to incorporate the sharing of projects and resources across the global business. While the UK business was still relatively young (and in fast growth phase), the overall business of Nodes has been established for over 10 years. The next phase of the company’s growth needed to be led by an IT leader from a technology professional services background.
The emphasis was to find a driven and experienced people and business leader who would recognise the unique culture of our client’s business while also scaling it for the future. Their ideal candidate would have experience in leading a team, division or country, and in hiring or growing a team as well as strong professional consulting experience and a basic understanding of software architecture.
What made this interesting?
We were initially cautious to accept the assignment as recruiting an MD for a technology services company appeared to be a considerably different task from our usual searches: recruiting global technology leaders (CIOs/CTOs/CDOs) to large corporations in spaces such as retail and consumer goods. However, Nodes emphasised that we knew and understood them as a business, and we were convinced to take on the challenge.
This eventual success of the search was a learning opportunity for The Digital Board, demonstrating the benefits of being open to different opportunities and working outside of our established comfort zone.
What made this challenging?
This search required us to think differently, as we were looking for a business leader as opposed to a technology leader. We had to determine what the success criteria looked like for this kind of role and assess different qualities when identifying and talking to candidates.
Conducting the search also required engaging with stakeholders that we did not have as much of an established relationship with. The candidates had to eventually meet with the senior stakeholders of Monstar Lab, the Japanese technology conglomerate that owns Nodes. Prepping the candidates for these final interviews was a challenge given our limited interaction with them.
The Digital Board Process
We began the process by working alongside the client to shape the key aims of the role, suggesting components that were not originally considered that aligned with the client’s overall strategy.
We then worked closely with a number of stakeholders within the organization as well as our external contacts to define the target market/audience – looking at both competitor organisations as well as emerging competitors.
The key was to look for a dynamic leader with the following attributes:
Experience as a managing Partner or Head of Digital/Software/Product or App Development teams with Revenue responsibility
Ability to drive sales, build pipeline and win mature and bigger clients in pitch processes
Skilled people leader in a consultancy environment with experience hiring and growing teams
Proven ability to intelligently operate and navigate in the industry as well as inside an international and entrepreneurial agency with an ambitious growth agenda
Our research team identified and contacted over 50 potential candidates soliciting interest and assessing initial fit.
From there, we began the first stage of Digital Board qualifications, holding 45-minute preliminary qualification calls with twenty-two top profiles of interest, particularly looking at (1) reasons for interest, (2) fit to brief, (3) key achievements, (4) culture alignment and beyond.
Eight profiles were selected for interviews with the Partner at The Digital Board. Following these detailed competency assessments, 5 candidates were recommended for shortlist.
As usual, our research team continued to work on identifying further candidates throughout the process.
Success Story
The Digital Board provided a highly qualified and results driven leader with over 20 years’ experience inspiring talent to deliver world class business performance and creative solutions. Most recently, they worked directly with clients as a Management Consultant in order to solve business problems through the creation of new business models, customer experiences, digital products and services as well as operational excellence frameworks. The candidate had also recently built a Marketing and Product Innovation discipline for a major transport and delivery business, providing a substantial improvement in marketing return, product performance and brand sentiment.
Furthermore, the candidate had also worked as the CEO of a digital marketing agency. In this role, the candidate won 11 new accounts in two years, achieved by creating a new agency proposition and an inspirational creative environment subsequently increasing the agency profile.
With a career ranging from management consultancy to agency CEO, the candidate displayed all desired criteria for the role of MD of the UK and Middle East as well as a strong cultural fit to the organisation. Their wealth of experience in leading, developing and growing global teams in addition to their professional consultancy experience related to business strategy demonstrated the candidate’s strong fit for the MD Role.
Our shortlist also led to further hires. Nodes took a particular liking to one of our other shortlisted candidates, and they decided to create a role for them; eventually hiring them as the Group Chief Strategy and Consulting Officer and making further hires from our shortlist to populate their new team.