Penna in the Boardroom

Penna Executive Search – Board & CEO Practice

Across both the private and public sectors, we lead the market for Executive Search.

Partnering with our clients from the outset to understand their leadership requirements, we identify candidates of exceptional ability and potential. Our experience spans the range of executive and non-executive roles (including Chairs and Senior Public Appointments) providing you with the assurance of first time success in the most challenging and sensitive of circumstances. Our broad experience allows us to consistently deliver appointable shortlists of diverse, high-quality candidates across the spectrum of senior appointments.

As well as offering a market-leading approach to the identification and attraction of senior talent, we also provide a range of services built around the development of leadership capability in the Boardroom – their seamless integration has proved to be invaluable for our clients.

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Penna Interim Executive – Board & CEO Practice

As one of the leading providers of Executive Interim Managers, both in the UK and Internationally, we work with Boards and leadership teams, from FTSE 100 companies to SMEs. All assignments are undertaken in complete confidence and with an NDA provided where required.

We manage a register of experienced ‘career’ interims with extensive experience in strategic change, who are quickly able to impart their wisdom and knowledge to bring about fast and effective change.

We will engage quickly with you and your leadership team to help you establish the business imperatives and challenges of the assignment and provide advice on the most appropriate approach required for the Interim Executive to carry out the assignment successfully.

Our sector specialists within the private and public Sectors understand the current issues and challenges in your market and the performance improvement challenges faced by the Board.

Our partnership approach is supported by a tried and tested process:

• An Assignment Brief is quickly taken to clarify the specific needs of your assignment
• An Assignment Plan is agreed to set and manage expectations
• We present you with a Short-list along with the rationale
• We support you with the Selection, Offer and Negotiation Process and manage the Commercial Agreement
• We support you with the Engagement Process (Phase-in)
• We support you and the Interim throughout the assignment with relationship and benefits/performance tracking
• We support the Exit Management & Review process (Phase-out).

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Consulting Solutions

Our Consulting Solutions team draws on a significant track record of planning and delivering performance-enhancing change to organisations in both the public and private sectors.

Our team works with Boards and executive teams to help them:

• Define their strategy
• Develop plans and build capabilities to execute strategy across all levels of the organisation
• Achieve a culture of high performance
• Design and deliver the organisation necessary for high performance
• Achieve improved efficiency through restructuring and transformational working
• Define and deliver effective talent strategies.

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Assessment

Understanding and capitalising on people’s capability can mean the difference between business success and failure.

Our assessment practice is the largest of its type in the UK and is a leading expert in helping clients predict how people will perform in different roles, teams, organisations and cultures. It has a long track record in both the private and public sectors, helping ensure that people ‘fit’ and maximise their potential in order to deliver tangible business results.

Companies that fail to identify and appoint effective successors to key positions suffer, on average, a 13% reduction in their share price. The direct cost of appointing the wrong senior manager is estimated to be at least five times their annual salary and benefits. The turnover rate amongst employees who work for an ineffective boss is estimated to be 41% higher than for those who work for an effective leader.

Getting it ‘right’ pays dividends. Targeted investment in the assessment and development of high potentials has been shown to increase their retention by 79%. Evaluating people’s core capabilities and using the information to place people in key roles in a multinational business as part of a restructuring helped increase profit by 60% over a six month period. Increasing people’s understanding of their career path and development needs has been to shown to be directly linked to higher levels of engagement which in turn has been linked to higher levels of client satisfaction and a 4.6% increase in profit.

aKumen (Penna’s leading edge assessment tool) for Leaders is a one-to-one executive assessment process. It predicts how leaders will perform in different roles, teams, organisations and cultures. It identifies where leaders are at risk of ‘de-railing’ as well as critical areas for development so that they maximise their potential and contribution to the business.

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Board & Executive Coaching

Members of the Board need senior coaches who have both empathy and an ability to engage with complex business issues. We’re proud that our team consists of some of the leading Board and Executive Coaches in the UK.

What are the benefits of Board and Executive Coaching?

• We help our clients to nurture their own authentic leadership, based on ‘real-life’ needs. We don’t preach latest leadership theory
• We offer leadership coaching with a “backbone and a heart.” We state what we see and hold our clients accountable
• We tailor our approach to the needs of the executive, drawing on a wide range of coaching and psychology theories and practices in line with the leading coaching professional bodies
• Our coaches are carefully selected. They possess executive gravitas, have been business leaders in their own right and are accredited coaches with extensive hours of executive coaching
• Regular supervision and continuous personal development are prerequisites in the evolving world of coaching
• Our coaching approach is underpinned by effective processes to ensure scalability, consistency and measurable results across teams, divisions and borders.

As well as coaching individuals in a one-to-one environment, we are also able to support and facilitate Boards with their activities, ensuring that their actions and outputs add even greater value to their organisations:

• We facilitate in a highly contextual way
• We strive to achieve the balance between facilitating a team to their desired outcomes with responding and flexing in the moment to what the team need and want
• We uphold the need for everyone in the room to have an equal voice whilst recognising there needs to be a point of accountability
• We draw out rather than pour in knowledge and suggested approaches
• We ask coaching questions to assist teams to think and act
• We offer experience, when asked, without attachment to their point of view
• We challenge thinking
• We remain completely neutral without collusion
• We are appreciative rather than critical in approach; adult/adult rather than teacher/pupil or consultant/team.

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Senior Directors Unit – Outplacement

Our Senior Directors Unit addresses the very specific transition needs of directors of FTSE firms, multi-national companies, Partners from the global professional services firms and senior public figures in developing their careers particularly in times of transition. Our dedicated unit provides strategic career advice through a highly tailored combination of coaching, personal and leadership development and executive search skills.

The approach is holistic, blending support for the individual with strong market-based understanding of the issues that senior people face in career transition and development. Combining the skills of senior director coaches and a wide range of specialist faculty consultants, its objective is to develop clients’ overall leadership capability and help them access their target market or markets as directly and effectively as possible. They work with clients as business partners until their goals are realised.

Many senior executives welcome the chance to stand back from their careers and explore other directions, safely behind closed doors. So while many clients land another senior role, others give practical thought to setting up a business or to a portfolio of directorships, consultancy or not-for-profit work.

Established over 20 years ago, we have an active alumni group of senior executives with whom their clients can network as appropriate.