Metrics & Analytics: The candidate must be capable of and comfortable with quantitative metrics and analysis. The successful candidate will be able to articulate the current state of XYZ Corporation’s business in quantitative terms such as units, revenue and margin per unit, sequential and annual growth rates, product mix, costs, margins and expenses. Specifically, this executive will be responsible for driving sophisticated, measurement-based financial management processes through the businesses to ensure accurate planning, forecasting, reporting and controls which can support and further enhance the initiatives of the company.
Leadership & Communications: Excellent leadership skills and an effective and open communication style are essential. The ideal candidate is mature, self-confident, and sufficiently aggressive to champion ideas which he/she feels are in the best interests of XYZ Corporation, but also someone who can listen well and incorporate the ideas of others, resulting in win-win solutions. They will have the ability to communicate upward and downward with equal ease of effort while projecting a strong team orientation. Additionally, the successful candidate will be responsible for building and developing teams and, therefore, should have demonstrated capacity to hire, motivate, train and promote.
Entrepreneurial Tendencies, Energy Level & Demeanor: This executive must have strong entrepreneurial tendencies and a high energy level, someone who has demonstrated the desire and capability to build businesses. The candidate must enjoy and indeed thrive in a fast-paced environment, which constantly generates new challenges which can result from growth or industry conditions. XYZ Corporation’s environment has been characterized as a ‘large start-up’ with an infrastructure constantly catching up with the company’s size. Such a fast pace suggests that the ideal candidate is a facile thinker, someone who can mentally ‘parallel process’ versus thinking sequentially. If a candidate has not experienced an aggressive growth environment, he/she should still be comfortable with driving for growth and change in a competitive business environment.
Relationship Building: XYZ Corporation’s executives are comfortable with, and have demonstrated success at, operating in a decentralized, highly matrixed organization. This suggests that the ideal candidate has developed excellent facilitation, persuasion, teamwork skills and has the ability to see the ‘big’ picture. Moreover, high integrity and mutual trust are essential to successful execution within XYZ Corporation’s fast-paced, ever-changing environment.
Execution & Strategy: Demonstrated consistent effectiveness at executing against plan is an absolute must for this executive. XYZ Corporation rewards excellent execution over creative visions, partially due to the fast cycle times associated with XYZ Corporation’s direct business model. Consequently, a candidate must have an orientation toward tactical execution versus strategy formulation. Must be able to manage down to the level of details when necessary ("make it happen”). Key to execution will be the ability to thrive in the XYZ Corporation environment with competing and shifting priorities.
Intellectual Agility: Given the fast-paced decision making environment within XYZ Corporation, to be successful the executive must be intellectually agile -- as comfortable in dealing with concepts and complexity as well as details and simplicity. Specifically, he/she should be able to see all potential consequences of a business decision/action, down to its subtleties, and practically address the possible impacts of the decision. In order to do so, he/she must be able to think things through carefully. He/she should know when (and with whom) to influence using concepts vs. details, and vice versa. While logic and objectivity should be primary guides in decision-making, the intellectually agile executive will be considerate of the sensitivities of a particular situation. Moreover, he/she should be quick on his/her feet.
