Thought Leadership: Elected! Executive Assessment Revised

July 22, 2015 Share this article:

By Stefan Peetroons, Management Consultant Accord Group Belgium

Solving a problem, begins by defining it

When assigning or promoting someone to an executive or managerial position, it’s imperative that the anticipated value creation is clearly defined in advance.

• Is it the intent to optimize the current business context? To increase sales and reduce costs?

• Or to participate in the strategic development of business scenarios and manage the change?

• Or to shape a new business model and answer the question: who do we want to be for whom?

1) Ask the right questions. Premises like these are fundamental, for they determine the criteria on which the executive needs to be (s)elected, outshining the necessary knowledge and experience, competences, personality and value drivers. Many acknowledge the latter, but when value creation is determined by the contribution an executive makes when formulating strategic judgements, other rules apply.

Both the complexity of the challenges that the executive will face, as well as his or her capability to deal with these challenges, are often insufficiently clear. And misjudgement in this respect is often the cause of value destruction instead of value creation, costly resignations and unpleasant personal dramas.

2) Organize for value creation. Organizations can be seen as systems built up through distinguished layers of complexity. To cope with the increasingly complex environment wherein organizations operate (due to globalization, technological developments, demographic shifts … or other evolutions), it’s vital that boards appoint executives able to manage the complexity level the role requires to manage. In other words:

• Is the executive able to understand and shape the role’s complexity in all its dimensions?

• Does the executive have the personality traits, talents, values and motives that enable him/her to effectively align with the changing environment?

• And has the executive acquired the necessary knowledge and experience that allow him/her to utilize their capability to the fullest?

3) Elect for value creation. Being able to give meaning and content to the presented, and increasingly complex, business reality becomes the competence that will be evermore required to meet the changing business needs, a decisive competence, a disruptive competence.

To talk about the revised executive assessment - and the (s)election for value creation - contact us! We’ll be happy to share with you more about these ground breaking yet pragmatic insights.


*To explore further this proven line of thinking, visit: www.thedisruptivecompetence.com or Accord Group Belgium