What differs here

What a scorecard for this sector has to account for.

Every search we run starts from the outcomes the role has to produce. These are the things that, in this sector, a generic process reliably misses.

The plant and the enterprise reward opposite instincts

A plant manager succeeds by being present, deciding quickly, and being trusted by people who see them every day. A VP of Operations succeeds by setting standards they cannot personally enforce, at sites they cannot personally visit, through people they did not hire. The second role is not a larger version of the first, and the skills that made someone excellent at one can actively impede the other.

Numbers move with the cycle

A general manager whose throughput and margin improved across a demand upcycle has a strong résumé and may have changed very little. We establish what the candidate changed and separate it from what the market did — which is a question most reference calls never ask.

Safety is an output of leadership, not a policy

TRIR and DART are lagging indicators of whether people believe leadership means what it says. We take them as evidence, then ask the question that matters: what the candidate did on the specific occasion when a schedule commitment and a safety decision were in direct conflict.

Continuous improvement has two populations

Executives who ran a kaizen program, and executives who changed how a plant actually operates. Both describe themselves in identical language and both have certificates. A structured reference protocol separates them reliably; an unstructured one never does.

Labor relations are a judgment, not a credential

In an organized environment the real question is whether a leader can hold a position without making the next negotiation harder. Few hiring processes get within a mile of this, and it is frequently the thing that determines whether the hire lasts.

The common failure

Hiring the operator from a world-class system — a Toyota, a Danaher, an Illinois Tool Works — into a business that will not have that system around them. The capability was partly the person and partly the apparatus, and the ratio varies enormously between individuals. We assess which part is portable rather than assuming the logo answers it.

How we work here

Four engagements, one method.

The method does not change between sectors: a scorecard agreed before we start, the same questions for every candidate, and the evidence written down. What changes here is what we look for, and who we call to check it. How we choose the right assessment for a role →

Engagement	What it is
Executive Search	Retained executive search in which the assessment is the product. A written assessment of every finalist against an agreed scorecard, with the evidence behind each rating and a stated confidence level.
Leadership Diligence	Pre-close assessment of a management team against the operating model at close. Fixed fee, three weeks from access, no placement obligation and no contingent element.
Bench Review	Assessment of your own leaders against the roles the plan requires. A readiness map written so that it can be shared with the people named in it.
Market Mapping	A standalone map of the addressable population for a role: how many exist, how many are reachable, and what your compensation band actually buys. Fixed fee, three weeks, credited against a search.

Before a transaction

Industrial businesses change hands constantly, and the operating thesis usually assumes a step change the incumbent team has never been asked to deliver. We assess the management team against the post-close operating model rather than against the business they have been running. How human capital diligence works →

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Executive search for Manufacturing.