How to choose the right functional head for your organisation

After the CEO, it is the functional heads, or the one downs as they are called, who are the most important personnel for any organisation. Excellent functional heads are the back bone of well run organisations and they help in making the CEO's job easier by allowing him to focus on strategising and expansion rather than waste his energies in fire fighting day-to-day issues.

Moreover, strong functional heads make succession plans easier as one of them could take over the CEO's job should the need arise.

Lastly, choosing the right functional head is important as they typically handle large sized teams and hence their day-to-day actions impact a large percentage of the workforce.

So, how should an organisation pick the right person for this role?

From our experience, we have seen that organisations typically face the following dilemmas while choosing the functional heads:

INSIDER OR OUTSIDER

Should the organisation choose an insider as the functional head or is it an opportunity to bring in fresh thoughts and ideas by picking an outsider? The answer is not an easy one and there are no set formulas to get this right. If there is an outstanding performer within the company who should get the nod, then she can be chosen. Some organisations also have a policy to pick an insider as a way to recognise loyalty and thus build a culture of rewarding longevity within the organization.

What if there is more than one outstanding performer? For example, in one organisation which had to fill a position for Head of Sales, both the Southern and Western Zonal Heads were in contention and there was very little to differentiate between them in terms of skills and qualities needed for the job. These kind of situations need to be handled with care and the person not being considered will have to be counseled separately clarifying that the company definitely has plans for him and his contribution is much valued.

Some situations may need an outsider to be brought in to fill the position. For example, if the company is growing very slowly, fresh thinking may be needed to infuse energy. Along with capability fit, it is also important to determine cultural fit of the person coming on board. John Sculley came in to Apple with great credentials from Pepsico but could not fit in to either the demands of the technology industry or working with a person of the stature and personality traits of Steve Jobs.

STRATEGIC THINKER OR EXECUTION SPECIALIST

In our opinion, sometimes too much is made of strategy. Boards and senior management get frequently swept of their feet by a snazzy presentation of how change in strategy is going to take the company into a completely new orbit. In their excellent book, "Execution: The discipline of getting things done", Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan stressed on the need to put focus on execution. The book lauded by notable business leaders as Michael Dell - CEO of Dell Computer, L.R. Raymond - CEO of Exxon Mobil, and Ralph Larsen - CEO of Johnson & Johnson states: "Execution is the great unaddressed issue in the business world today.  Its absence is the single biggest obstacle to success and the cause of most of the disappointments that are mistakenly attributed to other causes."

Thus, it is very important for organizations to ensure that functional heads with a single minded focus on execution are chosen so that the plans and vision of the company can be realised.

PERSONALITY TRAITS

Does one choose the ruthless leader over the soft leader? Does the role require consensus building or is the need of the hour to march on without looking too much over one's shoulder? In an ever changing industry like technology what are the innovation skills expected of the leader? Will he be at the forefront of anticipating changes before they happen and calibrate product strategy accordingly? Answers to these questions will determine the right fit while making a choice. As stated earlier, these are key appointments that an organisation makes. Ideally one would like to choose a leader who has the ability to achieve the best outcomes for all the stakeholders, i.e. shareholder, customer, employees and society.