"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Stopgap Group
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The Sacred Cow of Executive Search

Dear Editor

It was disappointing to see the response from Peter Felix, president of the AESC in your letters’ page regarding David Longbottom's comments in the Advocate section on growing his own talent pool and the implications for the Search industry (January 2005 Issue).

Whether David's prognosis proves to be accurate or not remains to be seen and I'm sure that if we challenged ourselves we could develop a business model that can deliver more than 'benchmarking' services. However, what is clear, to me at least, is the desperate need for change within our industry, which is what I believe David is ultimately looking for. And so he should. David is a customer after all, and the arrogance of the search industry, and the AESC it seems now, to challenge the client on what they actually want and need is frankly exasperating. Speaking as a former client and someone who has spent a few years in strategic customer consulting, the key is to listen to your customers, not try and bend them to your thinking.

Day in day out, our industry trots out the same old excuses and propositions to defend the sacred cow that is the retainer based on salary. Peter goes to great lengths to point out that what David proposes will result in 'inferior executives being presented' and the relationship 'disintegrating into a contingency arrangement'. One imagines that Peter has great difficulty in even saying the word.

Well I'm sorry but I don't buy it. Yes, the retainer arrangement is still the bedrock of our own business, but we are not so naive to think that this is not going to change, because it will. As night follows day, change is coming and we are all challenged to look to the future and develop alternative business models rather than stick our heads in the sand.

If the search industry does not start listening and embracing what David, and others are saying, no matter how unpalatable it may be, then out of work or 'resting' search consultants might one day soon outnumber Actors in the same predicament.