For years, the financial industry has leveraged hard-core research to do its due diligence and to make ungodly sums of money. They know it pays to invest in intelligence. Same goes for the marketing industry. Marketers live and die by research. They are masters of teasing out a competitive advantage from seemingly indecipherable demographic data. So what's up with most traditional retained search firms? Why do the vast majority of search firms claim a competitive advantage and then do research the same old cookie cutter way that every one else is doing it?
I am not taking aim at select colleagues at these firms, whom I feel fortunate to count among my friends. Rather, what I find remarkable is the the lemming-like behavior of the retained search industry as a whole.
( lem·ming (lěm'ĭng) n. Any of various small, thickset rodents, especially of the genus Lemmus, inhabiting northern regions and known for periodic mass migrations that sometimes end in drowning.)
Check the search process statements of Spencer Stuart, Egon Zehnder, Korn/Ferry and of the other major firms. Even though research is the execution engine of search that identifies and develops candidates, traditional search is still cruising around in their Edsels. No mention of transforming research into intelligence and leveraging it for a competitive advantage. We've found our clients prefer search with intelligence embedded in virtually every step of the process.
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