By Tim Mead
Managing Director,Gustin Partners

Searching for leaders, consulting on strategy, positioning in markets and incubating startups—the activities that go on day to day at Gustin Partners and its affiliate GP Capital—most days is maddening: Sort of like juggling a bowling ball, a tennis ball, a ping-pong ball and a BB. All spherical for sure, but all different in most other respects.

Occasionally our organized chaos produces a unique vantage point from which the firm sees a common trait among disparate clients which lies behind success. One such trait recently emerged in the course of serving a $10 billion services giant, a £250 million mini-conglomerate, a $100 million industrial equipment supplier and a U.S. federal innovator with aspirations to hit all of those growth targets in the next decade.

The trait? Precision is the hiring manager’s secret weapon.

How managers and their supporters—notably HR staffs far more passionate for performance than sycophantic in nature—arrive at knowing precisely who to enlist in their corporate causes varies company to company.

In one case, a corporate VP penned a job description as detailed as a Boeing blueprint. In another, a CEO invested in testing to determine what exactly constituted the “right stuff” in the organization’s top client development leaders, then proceeded to seek out only such “stuff” in candidates vying for leadership roles. In still another, a CEO and his human capital lieutenant jousted over requirements until reaching a compromise on a profile acceptable to all critical functions affected by the hire. And in the final example, a CEO simply hires on the basis of gut instincts—ones, however, that are as accurate as any calibrated instruments for measuring intellect, energy and cultural fit.

One could argue that the instinct-driven CEO isn’t precise at all. Gustin Partners’ 25 years of experience and a personal one run counter to that argument. One of my former bosses was a world-ranked tennis player with a master’s degree in mathematics—physical and mental evidence of his familiarity with the concept of precision. He had me interview with half a dozen business unit leaders that his function supported and the company’s CEO—not once but several times.

“Were all of those rounds of interviews necessary? Is hiring here that rigorous a process?”  I asked after being offered the job. “Of course not,” he replied. “You had the job after the first interview. I just used the other rounds to let everybody know what they were in for.”

“What exactly is that?” I asked.

“I’m hiring you to tell us what we should be worried about, not what we are worried about,” he deadpanned.

Precisely.

Tim Mead is a managing director of Gustin Partners. He is responsible for major client relationships and engagements across the spectrum of the firm's services, with a concentration on client companies in the professional services, media, communications services and advanced information technologies sectors.