Executive Search & Building Your Team With Christoph Clodius

As an organization grows in scope and scale, it would need to fill an increasing number of roles, especially in senior leadership positions. Executive search experts like Christoph Clodius help these organizations find talent that aligns with their vision, mission, goals and specific needs. Christoph has led the executive talent management for nine years with Ketchum Canada Inc. He is currently the Vice President at The Discovery Group. He joins Douglas Nelson on the show to explain the executive search process, from what organizations look for in candidates to how these people are brought on board and everything in-between.

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Executive Search & Building Your Team With Christoph Clodius

Our guest on the show is an old friend and my colleague at The Discovery Group, Christoph Clodius. Welcome, Christoph.

Thank you, Doug.

You’ve got a long track record in the social profit sector as a fundraiser and a search professional. Tell us a little bit about how you got started in fundraising.

I got into fundraising like most of us in the sector. I fell into it somewhat inadvertently but found I had some interest and skill in it for that matter as well. I started off studying Communications at SFU, which led to the wonderful co-op program. I served a few terms at the United Way of the Lower Mainland, both in communications and fundraising, which I parlayed into a fundraising career doing major gifts at UBC, working at the United Way itself and with the BC Paraplegic Foundation, which is now Spinal Cord Injury BC.

Subsequently, I realized that while I was enjoying fundraising, I wanted to take the skills that I’d learned into a slightly adjacent area. I realized there are lots in executive search and placements and so on that’s very akin to fundraising. It uses a lot of similar skills and still allows me to work with my colleagues in the sector and still making a difference both in people’s lives and helping organizations fulfill their missions. I saw an opportunity to pursue search and I leaped at it and the rest is history.

Since you’ve joined The Discovery Group in March 2020, a good time for a job change, we’ve had a lot of conversations about that transition that you put your finger on. Working in highly relational, high-level development programs and then moving into search, which can at times seem fairly transactional. I’m curious, as someone who knows the sector so well, how do you make that bridge between the importance of the relational work that a CEO or a head of fundraising is going to need to be successful in the role and the transaction of going out to the market and hiring the best person?

I don’t see searching transactional at all, but quite often, that is a conversation I have with many potential clients, many board members and executives that are looking to fill roles. It can be seen as a mechanistic process of simply posting a job on one of the many job posting sites and advertising through many community postings nationally, locally and so on, and expecting applications to pour in. I find that organizations that are reflective in their needs that appreciate that complex needs require complex processes. They do much better and understand that they are also working to sell their organization or need to get people on board with their organizations and their organization’s missions.

The relational piece comes down to understanding an organization, understanding the myriad constituents and relationships that it holds with its donors, volunteers, members, client groups and with the communities at large that they serve. It is also understanding that many relationships are at play in a leadership opportunity, a leadership search in which organizations do best in their searches can appreciate that there are many relationships at play. Understanding and delving in more depth into the relationships is certainly worthwhile and pays off in the long-term.

What do you say to boards or to CEOs that are saying, “We need one of those. We need an executive director. We need a CEO. I need a head of marketing or head of fundraising?” It’s not like you can go to the grocery store or go on Amazon and order one of those. Where do you start that conversation with those leaders about making sure that they get the right relational value that they need for that candidate to be successful?

I work to understand what the needs are of the organization. I would try to understand, if you need this person to do something. You have a list of tasks. For instance, you have this list of attributes. Fundamentally, when we peel away the layers of what we are looking for, what are the big picture dreams? What are the big accomplishments in the sector? We tend to call that the strategic plan. We tend to call it the mission and vision. What is it you want this person to achieve? What are the ultimate goals? That should be your starting point of drafting a document or understanding what it is that you’re looking for. What you’re doing in an organization should be fulfilling your ultimate long-term big picture and high-level needs. Starting off with a list of attributes or with the previous incumbents’ job description while worthwhile, doesn’t necessarily get you the person you need because organizations evolve, organizations and strategies can change.

Some self-reflection and understanding of who you are as a group and where it is that you want to go is often the starting point. The conversations I have are rarely about a skills-based matrix, years of experience, education or a particular credential. It’s about who you are as a group. What is the culture like at the organization now? What are some of the affinities you have? What is the alignment to the mission you’re looking for? How important is alignment to mission, for instance? We then go from there to understand, let’s talk about what you’re trying to fulfill as a mission because people in this sector are mission-driven. We’re focused on what it is that we want to achieve and aligning vision and mission to the people is a great starting point

How often do you encounter CEOs, for example, looking to hire a head of fundraising, a vice president and a director of development? They don’t have the background. They don’t have an understanding of the actual work of the position. They said, “I need a director who’s going to go raise unrestricted major gifts, that fantasy unicorn fundraising strategy.”

That’s a great challenge. That speaks where searches can often go wrong fairly quickly and that’s unrealistic expectations. To your point, it is the lack of understanding of what exactly the role fulfills. Often, my task is to understand what it is the organization wants to achieve, how the VP development, how the director of fundraising and the CEO can help fulfill that. In some ways, it’s an education process. That’s where our background in fundraising helps, given that we have depth in the sector and we understand the roles we’re helping organizations to fill. We appreciate that while the credentials and education help, the goal of undesignated gifts is certainly worthwhile. Unfortunately, that’s what gets a lot of attention or many board members may see that significant gifts from other organizations in the news.

“Why can’t we do that? Why can’t we get significant dollars from banks? They’re doing the X, Y, Z organization raised a $9 million gift. Why can’t we do that thing or a nine-figure gift?” It comes down to boards and leaders appreciating that these are dedicated skillsets. These are professionals in their area. They have unique skills, much like a lawyer having a legal background, a banker, having a finance background. A fundraiser has a background in specific skills related to fundraising around relationship-building, negotiation, comfortable with data and data management, working towards specific goals, goal achievement, and working well as a part of a team.

Coming back to your question about understanding the nature of the role and getting to specifics, that can be an education process that can take time to get there, but more often than not, board members or the most successful ones, have an awareness that themselves aren’t necessarily the experts in a topic. They are willing to listen to advice, willing to peel away the layers of a resume or an onion and get to the depth of somebody’s experience.

That’s a great and thoughtful answer. I’m curious, this is one of my pet peeves about the sector, particularly, boards that are willing to hire someone who doesn’t have a background in the social profit sector. Someone who’s never worked at a large not-for-profit or never worked at a charity, but they say they’ve got transferable skills. Why is it that boards are continuing to look beyond the sector, that expertise in that background that is important to hire people into roles that they’ve never done before?

That speaks to people’s own comfort. It’s human nature and one’s own bias to have comfort with the kind of people that you yourself are like. We see this come up a lot in inclusivity and issues related to diversity, access, and equity. If you were a person in the world of finance, you may be comfortable with someone else from the world of finance and think that, “This person has some transferable skills. I understand what they’re talking about. I understand their background. Thus, I can understand how that background may help us here,” or they have a somewhat simplistic view of the world of social profit work. They think fundraising is just like sales or negotiation. The word just comes up often in these kinds of conversation. The sector reduces the complexity of the work to some simplistic terms.

In many ways, board members or senior leaders doing the hiring can have the most comfort in the mirror reflect back on their own experience and their own backgrounds. Therefore, they feel that the backgrounds that they had or their own paths, for instance, gives them comfort. We see this quite often in boards where many board members are coming from the corporate sector. Not to demean all the corporate sector does important work, incredibly philanthropic people work in the corporate sector and bring a lot of value to the social profit sector. When it comes to hiring, that can be an obstacle in regards to one’s own background.

Let me push back a little bit on that. You’ve got the people sitting around the board table. We’re looking at the people that have this background in the sector. We don’t think they’re up for this. There’s not someone that fits with our organization or with our mission and vision. There’s no one to hire in the sector so we’re going to reach outside of the sector. As a search leader, what do you do to frame that conversation in a way that may bring them back a little closer to the golden path?

I don’t necessarily push them too much, to be honest. If someone wants to look at somebody outside the sector, there’s value in having some of those people in the mix, in the conversation to interview them. If you were enamored with that concept, let’s explore it. Let’s see if it’s worthwhile. There have been some great examples of people coming from outside of the sector and having success in it. I’m sure we can all think of some examples. With that said, understanding that organizations that the sector is unique and many aspects of the sector are unique and people that come up within the social profit sector or those hold leadership roles in the social profit sector do so for a reason. They bring a diverse wide-ranging leadership skillset that has unique pieces. Some of those I’ve already mentioned, but they do relate to mission, vision and appreciating the complexity of what’s happening in the sector, and making sure that you are serving your diverse constituents. That is very different from the corporate world.

In the theme of diversity, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a diverse candidate slate, per se. In fact, I encourage it, but where we need to have caution is the piece around fit. For instance, you mentioned the fit word. I tend to not use fit if I can help it because it’s an often very coded word for bringing one’s own bias to the table around someone’s background, how someone presents themselves, or something as ludicrous as dining habits, for instance, if you’re having lunch with someone. Different cultural backgrounds can be mirrored and present themselves in different ways. That’s no reason to exclude someone. I use fit very carefully and I always try to unpack it when people talk about fit, with our culture or with our organization. It’s a little bit of a flag for me and something I’m always leery of discussing.

I think fit often means comfort. Does this person make me feel comfortable? Which can be coded, I think often it’s not intentionally coded. But fit isn’t a thing so it’s important to unpack that.

Everybody needs to walk before they can run. There is no such thing as a cut-and-dried person for any role in your organization. Click To Tweet

Comfort is also often synonymous with complacency. With organizations making leadership changes, I’m cautious with organizations that are too complacent in their hiring or are a little bit status quo, particularly that organizations.. we see many organizations struggling under different circumstances and regressing somewhat in their commitment to mission and vision. I want to push the envelope a little bit. I want to challenge organizations, boards and leaders to push themselves to do better and have more success. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you hire the most ambitious or hire the most aggressive candidate, but there are lots of creative solutions and things happening in the sector and we shouldn’t necessarily sit back or take the easy road, way out.

On that topic or that idea of pushing back, shouldn’t organizations all be publishing their salaries?

I think so, and that’s the trend that’s going on right now. I think just looking at someones salary and asking their expectations and not having a conversation about what your bend is that can perpetuate historic inequities that we’ve seen throughout history of underrepresented and marginalized groups being underpaid for the work they’re doing. So I think there is a key piece to address that balance around sharing salaries. I certainly share salaries or share salary ranges when speaking with candidates. I think we owe it to them to be transparent and the earlier we have the conversation about aligning expectation and needs. I think it’s valuable to do.

I think at the same time candidates need to be judicious that just because a salary range is in place that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a starting point or negotiation point. Too many times I’ve spoken to candidates, very few of whom actually ended up getting the job, candidates saying or thinking to themselves, “That’s just a starting point. If this salary is up to X, what they’re actually meaning is X plus 20% or X plus 10%.” That’s often not the case. A budget for a salary is set for a particular reason. Part of the conversations I have very often with my clients is to understand market conditions and comparable organizations and to really assess if that salary is fair and reasonable within the context, expectations, team size, and geographic scope. If we have a fair salary at the beginning, candidates appreciate that. They appreciate the transparency and it works out better in the long run for all. That’s a very long answer to a straight simple question.

I think it’s an important straightforward thing that all the organizations can be doing to contribute to equalizing salaries across the sector. It’s critically important that we get to a level playing field as soon as we can. Getting to a level playing field involves a lot of steps. Many of them are very complicated and will take a lot of time, but publishing salaries, to me, when you’re searching for a role is something that every organization can do straightaway.

Absolutely.

When a board or a CEO is hiring a senior position, what are the factors that contribute to it being successful? We know for publicly traded companies, the eighteen monthly success rate of CEOs is a little over 50%. In our sector, it is probably a bit higher than that, but when organizations are hiring new leaders, whether it’s the head of fundraising or the head of the organization, there’s a lot of risks involved. What are the elements that make that risk pay off and make those organizations that are successful be successful?

There are a few aspects there and I’m going to work somewhat in reverse chronological order. One of the biggest indicators and biggest correlations to success is the on-boarding process. Having an on-boarding process, that’s supportive of the new leader that makes the key introductions that lends some of the board’s credibility to this person, so that the person is coming in with the established understanding that this is our choice. This is our person. We’re going to support them in everything we do, but not being too prescriptive. Letting this person find their way, chart their course, get to know the people, the plans, the systems and the organizations, at their own pace and come up with their own ideas. That the onboarding piece is not to be dismissed. Too often, it’s overlooked, taken for granted or a new leader is set on their way. They’re given a few days of meetings and then go to it kind of thing and in a two months’ time, the chair checks in. That’s not good enough. It needs to be quite rigorous and quite thorough.

Early on in the search or going back a little bit, understanding what the expectations are for the new person and making sure the expectations are realistic within the context of the organization and the role. Expecting this new person to come in and raise X millions of dollars within the first three months to use an updated term. We still hear the term Rolodex a lot. This person’s coming from another organization and has been very successful. There is no doubt they’re going to bring that Rolodex of donors along. That doesn’t work either. That does not help retention at all. What does work is the relational piece. It’s getting to know this leader as a person, understanding how they aligned to the organization’s mission, what success they’ve had in the past of promoting a mission, supporting a team’s growth, working to build a culture of philanthropy in the case of a fundraising organization or a successful collaborative culture and a broader service delivery organization, and so on, and not expecting perfection.

All leaders are flawed. We are all flawed. Everybody’s flawed in some capacity. Understanding that this person has a growth trajectory they will be on that. They’re not going to step in and hit the ground running on day one. I hear that phrase all the time and I cringe whenever I hear it. Nobody hits the ground running. Everybody needs to walk before they can run. There are a few different steps tied up in there. It’s not necessarily cut and dried and different organizations are in a different state of their self-awareness and what they’re looking for in a leader. These are some of the key things I look for fundamentally.

I want to switch the perspective because search has two sides to it, which is also for candidates. I will never forget the first experience I had having hired a search consultant, being on the other side of the table, having worked with search consultants for jobs earlier in my career. It really is a fundamentally different side of the coin. What advice are you most often asked for or what question are you most often asked by prospective candidates when they’re looking at a role?

I’m asked most what the team is like. Fundamentally, what does the team like? What is the board like? What is the culture like? Almost 90% to 95% of candidates want to know what the people are like. Again, it comes down to relationships. This business, this sector is a relationship-based one. It’s a relational sector and relational organizations. People want to be happy. They want to be working with people that are keen to contribute to the mission that works hard but have fun. It always comes down to people. Inevitably, I’m going to get a question about culture, people, leadership and what’s the team like.

What’s one question that you wish people who are candidates would ask more often or you advise them to ask more often if they’re going into a search process?

I don’t know but I’ve thought about that before. It might be a little meta, but I speak about it proactively. I talk about what my role is in the course of a search. I really want to be transparent with candidates. They understand that I’ve been hired by the organization doing the searching. I have a vested interest in making them successful and making the organization successful with this new person, but I’m not doing my job if I’m not also not working with candidates to make sure they have a positive experience and they get something out of it as well.

Ultimately, only one person is going to get the job and because of that, there are going to be many unsuccessful or perhaps unhappy people as we go through the course of the search. I speak proactively about my role and how I’m going to support candidates in this role, but I don’t get a lot of questions about it. It’s almost taken for granted, but I know lots of search consultants, head hunters and executive search people work differently in processes, practices, candidates support and client support. There’s no one size fits all for organizations. There’s no one size fits all for candidates as well. I’m finding there are lots of variation among how search consultants’ work.

From your perspective, what is most important in terms of supporting clients or candidates as they go through the process?

Transparency is important. I think getting to know your candidates and I joke about this with candidates; By the time I introduce candidates to an interview panel or by the time I introduced candidates to a client, I will have spoken to them often, half a dozen times. I’ve gotten to know them. I’ve established a rapport with them. I understand their backgrounds and personalities. I can’t ask personal questions, but quite often, candidates will share some personal information that I need to treat confidentially and discreetly. Transparency doesn’t always apply, but at the same time, I’ve gotten to know people. They know me and they understand my role and how I can support and assist them.

By the same token, I’m not doing my clients any services if I’m not open with them in understanding, what have been the challenges in this search to date? What am I hearing from the community about your organization? It can be a tough conversation to have. If a client organization isn’t well-regarded in the marketplace or how things were left off with their last leader has left a poor perception of the organization or conversely if the organization is highly regarded and there’s a lot of interest in the role, that’s a good news story, that’s good to share. The perspective I bring from an arm’s length view in the hiring process and the recruitment process, I hope it adds some value to the conversations, how a board or an organization sees itself and how it can be in the marketplace.

One last question about candidates. If there was one thing that you could change about the process of getting to the actual interviews themselves, your magic wand, what would you change about how the way a typical search goes?

This can be done technologically, but I would have some uniformity of documentation, which is quite simple. It’s more operational than strategic, but there are so many CVs and many application formats that people use. There are little human uniformity and very little consistency. In fact, all the advice that people get can be quite distinct as well. The advice I give a candidate on how to support their CV and support their materials can be quite a bit different again from how another search consultant may do it. That’s one thing I look for.

This is my frustration and I share this frustration with both clients and candidates alike. If I could speed it up at all, I would. By the time an opening is in place, the board wants to move quickly. The client wants to move quickly. They’ve got an opening. They’ve got a need. They’ve got revenue that they may be losing. They’ve got team members that need some supervision. They’ve got some key meetings coming up or some key opportunities that they want to make sure that they’re leveraging.

Good leaders are always going to be in demand to some degree. Click To Tweet

Whereas candidates, as they get excited in the course of a search, the opportunity, the people, they get more excited. They want to see it happen more quickly too. I do what I can to speed that up, but at the same time, we need to be rigorous, thoughtful and strategic in doing recruiting and searches in many ways (and I joke about this a lot when I’m giving talks and presentations) that many of the best practices in fundraising also apply to recruiting around identification, cultivation and solicitation in many ways. You can’t force that process, but I certainly understand. I feel the frustration too that it can often go a little longer than people may be comfortable with.

I’m enjoying this conversation, it’s a recorded version of conversations you and I have fairly often around the office. I hope it’s helpful for our listeners to learn why at The Discovery Group we’re adding this executive search and this board search function because we work so closely with our clients on putting that strategic plan in place, evaluating that mission and vision, building the fundraising strategy. Often, the next question is, who are we going to get to do this? We’re looking at transitioning our CEO to implement this plan or to take the organization to the next level. We need the fundraising team in place and the fundraising leader in place in order to make it happen. It’s really encouraging, I think, that now we can offer to our offer to clients an all in one solution with an organization that knows their organizations so well. How important is it do you think that a search consultant knows an organization at a fairly intimate level?

That is where I spend a lot of time working with clients. In many ways searches (and I joke about this) it’s front-loaded. So much of the work happens at the very beginning of a search to get to know an organization. I’ve spoken a few times in this conversation about culture, alignment, mission and vision. Getting to know an organization, getting to know the people and being able to put a face to a name and a personality and understanding the diversity of use and the diverse personalities within an organization is very important.

Oftentimes, much like the work you do in getting to know your organizations and doing the broad-based studies that you do, sometimes we’ll discover things, or I’ll discover things, in the course of a search that a board may not have been aware of. There may be some staff members, for instance, that may self-identify as being interested in leadership opportunities, but haven’t necessarily had the chance to advance. That there may be some donor programs that could be more elaborate than they are, perhaps and some missed opportunities.

There may be some disgruntled staff members that the board weren’t aware of nor should they necessarily be in a governance model. Not all board members get to that level, but knowing that there might be some issues in regards to morale, for instance or some missing pieces around documentation. More broadly thinking that the compensation models that are in place are not adequate for the market or somewhat outdated. Getting to know the organization early is important in part because and this is a high-level strategic piece.

One of my biggest frustrations and advice I give for people that aren’t necessarily in the market and not using a search consultant is when I see a job description that doesn’t speak at all about the organization. It doesn’t speak at all about the vision or what it’s trying to accomplish or the constituents that it’s serving or its geographic scope. It launches right into, “We’re looking for a chief development officer to raise $4 million a year and manage a team of three, work 9:00 to 5:00 and have a CFRE.” It gets into the operations and the specifics without talking about, “We are an organization that’s helping food security in the city of Vancouver. We’re an organization that’s delivering services to the disenfranchised across Canada. We’re an organization that’s supporting new immigrants.” Getting people excited about your mission is the number one draw for candidates to an organization. For me, understanding your mission, what it is that you’re trying to do, seeing if you have the strategy, and understanding what are your tactics operations. All those pieces are incredibly valuable when I’m talking to candidates and the kinds of things they want to know about and helped me get candidates on board.

I circle back to the importance of relationship building and how similar a search can be to a major gift process. What you described there is sort of that qualification and cultivation of potential candidates that organizations are doing through their ads and through the outreach that you’re undertaking as their search consultant.

It helps very much in the end as well. Using the fundraising analogy, when we get to the solicitation, when we’re in interviews and the offer, knowing the conversations I’ve had with the candidates, what they’re looking for out of their careers, out of their next opportunities, the kind of work they want to be doing, what they find fulfilling. Those conversations matching that up with what the organization is doing. The culture and what the people are like. Matching those pieces up at the end, it’s a bit of an a-ha moment. It’s taken some months or some time to get there, but those conversations at the beginning have tremendous dividends or are successful at the end of the search when the various pieces come to fruition.

We are recording this for the first week of December and the pandemic phase 2, second wave is in full affect. As you look forward into 2021 as people over the break tend to often think about what they want to do. Big New Year’s resolutions, preparing to change jobs or look for another opportunity in the new year. What do you see for the hiring market in the sector over the first quarter of 2021?

The past few months have been quite erratic and somewhat unpredictable. That goes for all sectors. I think everybody initially were really entrenched into what it is that they’re doing. They had to look inwards. Difficult decisions needed to be made in many organizations. We know lots of organizations had to make some staffing changes or seek some assistance in various capacities. I think things are rebounded somewhat or solidified somewhat. In the leadership market, good leaders are always going to be in demand to some degree. I don’t expect a significant change in early 2021, as it relates to organizations seeking good leaders and people moving on from their careers. This is a time of reflection. This is a time of pause for many people.

As we come through this next stage of the pandemic and to your point, as people think about over the holidays. Hopefully, they’ll have some time with families still. Hopefully, we’ll still be able to do that in a different way. As people think about their careers and as organizations plot for the future, as those plans solidify, I think strong leaders, strong plans and forward-thinking are always going to be the premium. I don’t think things are going to change significantly. I think how organizations cultivate their new leaders is going to change. There’s going to be more looking inward. Succession planning has been top of mind for me. I’ve been thinking a lot about that and how to encourage organizations to look within, cultivate, think about leaders and grow their staff from within to help create a stronger culture and keep people on board.

I think how we do searches as well as it relates to technology using Zoom, not having people fly across the country for interviews, the work from home environments. I know several people who have taken new jobs, sight unseen, have only met with their new boards over Zoom. The first time they met in person was when they arrived in the new city and started the work. There’s been some good case studies and lots of success in that respect. The primacy of in-person, I have to sit down and see this person, read their body language and meet them in person is some of the cliches and some of the thinking around that is evolving significantly.

What’s the role of fun in search?

Fun has no place in search [jokingly – laughing].

Fun has a big role in the search, clearly. Some of the most gratifying conversations have been early on in searches, when I’m getting to know candidates. It can be a position of vulnerability to open up and share your career paths or career aspiration and your desire. My personal style is to have some levity in the works. It’s to my detriment sometimes that I can lay the levity on a bit too thick if such a thing. The role of fun is an important one. I like to have fun in the work and it’s important that we appreciate that we’re all human beings here. We’re not going to get it right every time. I think we need to pause and reflect. We can take the work seriously, but I don’t think we should take ourselves too seriously.

One of the best pieces of advice I got coming into this role was to realize that you’re dealing with people. People make all kinds of decisions for all kinds of reasons. I’ve had people turn down roles because they finally decided to speak to their spouse at the last minute about a possible geographic move. I’ve had people accept roles when everything seemed unrealistic for them to make a move across the country, but they decided to go for it anyway. I enjoy that. I enjoy understanding people’s process, understanding people’s thinking and getting to a place where fundamentally people’s lives change because they join an organization that’s incredibly important to them and an organization subsequently changed by having great new people on board. It’s gratifying work.

It sounds like you’re in the right place, Christoph.

Awe, thank you!

Thank you for being on the show.

It is my pleasure. Thank you for having me and I’ll see you in the office soon I hope. Take care.

About Christoph Clodius