Jeremy Stevenson

I wonder what the board meeting was like at Astronomer this week? When a CEO and CHRO are publicly caught in a compromising situation it raises significant concerns about judgment, ethics, and the potential for liability or internal disruption. As a board of directors, your role is to act in the best interest of the company, its shareholders, and its employees. Here is a breakdown of how the board might react: 1) Call an Emergency Board Meeting 🚒 Objective: Understand the facts and assess reputational, legal, and organizational risk. Participants: Independent directors only at first, possibly legal counsel or an external advisor later. CEO would not be present. 2) Conduct a Thorough, Independent Investigation 🕵‍♀️ Engage external legal counsel or a firm specializing in employment investigations. There could be other issues involved such as fraud - did the tickets to the Cold Play concert go on the company card? Assess if their relationship violated company policies (e.g. conflict of interest). Whether there was any misuse of power, coercion, or retaliation involved. If the CEO or CHRO failed to disclose the relationship as required. 3) Consider Ethical and Cultural Implications This incident could undermine trust in leadership and HR integrity by shareholders and stakeholders of Astronomer. HR function’s role in handling complaints, culture, and DEI initiatives may now be compromised. Rules for me but not for thee: Employees may see a double standard if there are no consequences. 4) Decide on Consequences Based on Findings Here are some options: ☠️ Termination for cause (if policies were violated or trust is irreparably broken). ☠️ Voluntary or forced resignation of one or both parties. ☠️ Forced leave of absence during the investigation. ☠️ Public or internal reprimand, coupled with remedial steps (e.g., new policies, ethics training), if the board deems the incident poor judgment but not grounds for dismissal. 5) Communicate with Transparency and Care 📢 Reinforce to employees in a firm-wide communication that the board upholds accountability and ethical leadership. Reassure employees that HR remains a safe channel. To external stakeholders (as needed), keep messaging consistent, professional, and focused on values, governance, and business continuity. 6) Review and Update Policies 📒 Review your code of conduct, ethics, and relationship disclosure policies. Require executive-level disclosure of any personal relationships that could create real or perceived conflicts. If you were on the board of Astronomer right now, what would you do?

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We aren't seeing a ton of M&A right now, but we are certainly seeing the results of poor integration planning. Far too few buyers come to the table with a clear post-acquisition integration plan, especially on the human resources side. This isn’t just a missed opportunity — it’s a strategic risk. Why integration planning matters: * Culture clashes can kill performance... especially in highly regulated, compliance-driven environments. * Disjointed SOPs and workforce policies lead to operational drag, especially across multi-state operators. * Without a people strategy, you risk losing top talent and morale. Buyers should be asking: * What’s the state of the HR tech stack (payroll, scheduling, onboarding)? Is it scalable? * Are there employee classification or labor risks — especially around hourly roles or contractors? * What’s the leadership bench strength? Who are the culture carriers worth retaining? * Are benefits and compensation aligned and competitive, or will harmonization cause churn? * Is there a clear plan to align org structure and compliance training across entities? M&A without integration is like planting without watering — you might own the asset, but it won’t grow. Let’s stop thinking of HR as a post-close detail. It’s your retention strategy, culture play, and risk buffer — all in one. I would love to hear from folks in cannabis M&A, HR, or ops: What’s working — and what still needs fixing — when it comes to integration? #CannabisIndustry #MergersAndAcquisitions #HRStrategy #OrganizationalIntegration #CannabisBusiness

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When a company appoints an interim CEO, the default assumption is often “placeholder.” But the best interim CEOs don’t just hold the line, they set the stage for value creation.   In last week's edition of The Wall Street Journal CEO Brief, I connected with Erle Norton to share what we’ve seen across BCG’s CEO Advisory work: interim leaders have a unique opportunity to accelerate foundational moves that free up capital, sharpen performance, and position the permanent CEO for early wins.   Here’s how: - Outsider interim CEOs bring objectivity and boldness. Unencumbered by legacy choices, they can restructure, rationalize spend, and launch capability builds with fewer constraints—without breaking the core. - Insider interim CEOs walk a more complex path, especially if in contention for the role. But they can use the time to elevate their voice, deepen Board relationships, and begin acting on first-100-day priorities before the formal clock starts. - Across both paths, success comes from resisting the urge to play it safe and instead focusing on what would be true under any strategy: operational performance, efficiency, and trust-building in times of uncertainty. Check out the full CEO Brief is available here: https://lnkd.in/eu2XY2bT   #CEOAdvisory #Leadership 

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Global Capability Centers Don’t Fail. Leadership Does. If there’s one pattern I’ve seen repeat itself across 100+ Global Capability Centers, it’s this: A GCC is only as strong as the person leading it. Not the market. Not the org structure. Not the cost savings. The leader. The highest-performing centers—those that deliver innovation, scale, and real business outcomes—have one thing in common: a leader who can influence global stakeholders and inspire local teams. Someone who isn’t just a site head, but a strategic force. On the flip side? When a GCC underperforms, it’s almost never because of talent shortage or market limitations. It’s because there’s no influential, inspiring, empowered, accountable, world-class leader at the helm. Sometimes it’s a weak leader. Other times, it’s leadership by committee. Both are recipes for mediocrity. If your center doesn’t have a strong leader—fix that. Hire one. Replace one. Don’t wait for another underwhelming year to pass. Every GCC leader Zinnov has helped identify has turned their center into a global success story—some promoted to global roles within 2 years because of the impact they created. Don’t let your center drift. Lead it with intent. If you’re rethinking your GCC leadership, let’s talk. The right person can change everything. Zinnov Amita Goyal Karthik Padmanabhan Kavita Chakravarthy Mohammed Faraz Khan Namita Adavi Sourabh Karodi Sagar Kulkarni Hani Mukhey ieswariya k Saurabh Mehta Rohit Nair Amaresh N.

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The days of big base salaries, passive profit shares, and padded pensions for Partners in Professional Services are over. The compensation model is evolving, but many senior leaders are unwilling to keep up. They watched their predecessors coast through low-stress leadership roles with high salaries and generous pensions. Now that it’s “their turn,” they’re waking up to a new reality: the market no longer pays for tenure. It pays for performance. And that’s how it should be. Today’s upside is bigger than ever for those willing to back themselves. Challenger, PE-backed platforms are creating real wealth, through equity upside, but also through ownership and the opportunity to shape the business. But those rewards don’t come with comfort. They come with contribution and commercial performance. Too many are clinging to the old model. They’ve built their lives around guaranteed income and feel resentful about letting it go. But newer platforms are winning because they’re leaner, more commercial, and designed to reward those who generate value, not those who’ve just stuck around. And this isn’t just about mindset. If a senior leader won’t move from a fixed base to a model that ties reward to impact, that’s a red flag. It often means they’ve mastered internal politics, not client development. And that’s no longer enough. Holding out for the old model is a high-risk move. Legacy firms are tightening pay and shedding underperformers. The big roles with big bases are disappearing and once you’re out, getting in to a PE platform is tough. Those who adapt will thrive. Those waiting for the old system to return will be waiting a long time.

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Is your GCC where purpose is performed—or just preached while headcount and attrition are the only things measured? HQ can craft the slickest purpose statement in the world—but for most Global Capability Centers, it lands as nothing more than a poster on the wall. Research shows that while 84% of executives believe purpose drives performance, only 27% of employees feel their work connects to it. That disconnect is even sharper in GCCs, where distance from HQ makes purpose feel abstract and irrelevant. The celebrated narrative: “Our GCC is aligned with the company’s purpose.” The overlooked reality: Most GCC employees don’t feel it in their daily work. So how do you turn lofty words into performance in your GCC? Leaders must: • Translate purpose into outcomes: Link code, design, or operations directly to customer impact. • Embed it in goals: Make every OKR a bridge between local work and global mission. • Reinforce daily: Purpose should live in stand-ups, reviews, and recognition moments. • Grant autonomy and trust: Treat GCC teams as owners, not executors. Trust is the shortest path from purpose to performance. • Show business impact: Celebrate when a GCC deliverable moves the needle for revenue, innovation, or customer experience. If this resonates, repost it so more GCC leaders stop measuring headcount and start measuring impact. And if you’ve cracked this in your own center, drop your playbook in the comments—I’d love to learn how you’ve made purpose real. Zinnov ieswariya k Dipanwita Ghosh Amaresh N. Arpit Bhatia

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There is one critically important thing that that most executives don’t think about when they are exiting a role: what’s the narrative around my departure? Without a doubt, you will be asked. Not only “what did you accomplish”, but “why did you leave”? Maybe you’re a CEO and your company was sold; maybe you scored your next bigger (or dream) job. But often, it’s a more subtle narrative that needs to be told. Whatever it is, someone will ask the question. And you’ll need to answer it succinctly and crisply. But here’s the missed opportunity: figure out the most compelling reference(s) who will tell your story for you - a board member, boss, CHRO, maybe a c-suite peer. Call them (don’t text, this is important and subtleties matter), tell them what you are planing to say when asked that question, and - here’s the key - ask them if they are aligned with that narrative and could and would tell it similarly if asked. That’s it. It seems so obvious, but so many executives miss this critical step. [By the way, this is the “begin with the end in mind” aspect of my oft-shared advice about the importance for a new CEO to establish strong relationships with individual board members]. Who will corroborate your narrative when the time comes?

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For entrepreneurs, venture debt can feel like a lifeline when cash runs low, but it often comes with hidden traps that can cripple your business. When the market moves slower than planned, it's time to recalibrate. Protect your venture by acting fast and cutting burn. https://lnkd.in/gqSPccBr #StartupLessons #Entrepreneurship #VentureDebt

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As an executive search firm, we get this call frequently: "We need to upgrade a management team leader as the business has outgrown their skillset over the last 2 years." PE firms are designed to transform companies fast. They make them literally unrecognizable in many cases after new product innovation, M&A, re-branding, etc. So, when building the ELT in the beginning of the hold period, it's important to hire for this. And I think most people know this concept, but it's still easy to make the mistake. Sometimes it's required to bring in a less experienced hire because of budgets. But if budget allows for it, don't be afraid to over-hire for the role in the early period. The same applies to systems and processes. You wouldn't invest in implementing a CRM in year one that you know you'll have to scrap in year three. Now there's a balance that needs to be struck with over hiring. Someone who is too experienced that can't execute in the weeds will also turnover fast. So if you want to reduce the turnover in your port cos, hire someone who has executed what you need now and in the future. #privateequity #executivehiring

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The quickest way to stall a consulting firm’s growth? Keep adding services. This article shares the true story of a boutique consultancy that fell apart under the weight of its own service list. It didn’t fail because of poor delivery or weak consultants. It failed because it kept saying yes. Yes to more offerings. Yes to every opportunity. What seemed like flexibility was actually self-sabotage. In our experience in working with consulting firms, we’ve seen this pattern more often than we’d like to admit. Behind the scenes, it’s rarely about strategy. It’s about fear. The fear of missing out. The fear of a narrow focus. The fear of making a choice. If a consulting firm can't say no, it will never be able to scale. That's one of my biggest learning from the past decade. Read the story. It might feel uncomfortably familiar. https://lnkd.in/eiSC8KfN

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The best exits don’t start in a boardroom. They start in quiet decisions made years earlier. Choices no one sees. Processes no one applauds. Discipline no one notices. I’ve seen both sides: ▸ Founders who were “too early” to sell… but still walked away with premium valuations— because they ran their business like it could sell any day. ▸ And founders with 10x the revenue… who couldn’t get a buyer on the phone— because their business was too messy to trust. Let’s be clear on what “Always for Sale” really means: It doesn’t mean desperate. It means disciplined. It means building a company that could sell at any moment—on your terms. That kind of business is: ✅ Clean — Accrual-based financials that make sense ✅ Repeatable — Operations documented, not memorized ✅ Redundant — Founder could vanish for 2 weeks, and nothing breaks ✅ Transferable — Contracts, systems, and relationships live in writing ✅ Positioned — Growth plan, risks, and levers backed by data Why run your company this way—even if you’re not selling? Because it makes your business easier to run. More resilient. More valuable. To buyers, yes. But also to lenders, partners, and your own team. The exit might come in a year. Or ten. But when it does? You won’t scramble. You’ll already be ready.

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Is your Global Capability Centers (GCC) still speaking the language of yesterday’s metrics? The world has moved on. It’s time your KPIs did too. Counting transactions processed or tickets closed might have made sense a decade ago. Today, those numbers are table stakes. They don’t capture the true, strategic value your GCC delivers. The future is not about activity. It’s about intelligent, predictive value creation. Imagine this: • Software Product Development GCC – not just shipping features, but using AI to forecast adoption rates, flag hidden technical debt, and even recommend the next breakthrough feature based on market signals. • IT GCC – no longer reactive with “issues closed.” Instead, predicting outages before they occur and automatically preventing business disruption. • Finance GCC – moving beyond cost arbitrage to deliver prescriptive insights on global market shifts, currency volatility, and cash flow optimization. • Analytics GCC – going from static reporting to uncovering new growth markets, customer micro-segments, and innovation opportunities. • Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) GCC – instead of just reducing claim denial rates, applying AI to predict which claims are likely to be denied before submission, auto-correcting errors, and accelerating revenue realization by weeks. This isn’t a far-off vision. It’s happening now. GCCs that adopt AI-powered KPIs are no longer support arms; they’re engines of foresight and innovation for the enterprise. The shift is clear: From measuring what happened → to predicting and shaping what’s next. Which AI-enhanced KPIs are you most excited to bring into your global teams? Zinnov Amita Goyal Karthik Padmanabhan Mohammed Faraz Khan Namita Adavi Nitika Goel (She/Her) Diana Pastrana Prashant Keshri Janice Vaz

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I enjoyed talking with Financial Times Agenda reporter Lindsay Frost about the significant increase in interim CEO appointments in 2025. The article is in the Sept 5 FT Agenda newsletter and shares industry analyses on why we are seeing interim leadership evolve from a temporary fix to a strategic tool for managing transitions. Here are a few highlights from the article: Rush of Interim CEOs Shows No Sign of Slowing A high number of CEOs joined companies on a temporary basis in the first half of 2025, reflecting the volatile business environment, unexpected departures, high CEO turnover and weak succession plans, sources told Agenda. For boards, this is a reminder to be more intentional in succession planning. Although temporary CEOs can help businesses stay afloat during unexpected changes, they may not be the best fit for the company in the long run and could even be more disruptive, sources told Agenda. The bump in interim CEOs is likely due to a number of factors, sources told Agenda. Chief among them is the sheer amount of CEO churn that has taken place recently. "There's been so much CEO turnover that boards feel that it is less risky to put someone in an interim role to accomplish any of a variety of different things that may be at play," said Jane Edison Stevenson, global vice chair of board and CEO services and global leader of board and CEO succession at Korn Ferry. "[Boards] may want to just see someone in action before they make it a permanent appointment." However, hiring an interim CEO can point to weak succession planning, sources said. Similarly, unexpected departures can lead a board to select an interim while it commences a full search. Beyond 'Stopgap' There are a number of pluses and minuses to bringing a temporary CEO on board compared to a permanent CEO, sources said. Even in the corner office, "there's a need for more flexibility, and frankly, that's why we've invested so heavily in an interim business," Stevenson said. "We're in a time of such volatility and change that there are very few companies today that only need to perform," Stevenson said. "Almost all of them need to perform and transform simultaneously, and it's hard to do that on a temporary basis or a flexible basis." Once the board makes the decision to name an interim CEO, it has to determine where to pick that person from. Some 55% of 142 interim CEOs named to S&P 1500 companies between 2019 and 2023 were internal executives such as CFOs or COOs, according to WTW. Meanwhile, 39% of interim CEOs were previously board members, according to WTW. Only 10% were former CEOs of the company, while 6% were external recruits. Read the whole article by subscribing to FT Agenda.

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Five major industries are on the edge of transformation. Not because they’re broken. Because AI is creating opportunities that didn’t exist before. Legal. Healthcare. Education. Finance. Retail. The evolution is already in motion—quieter than most realize, faster than most expect. This isn’t just about automating tasks. It’s about reengineering workflows, upskilling teams, and redefining what strategy looks like in an AI-driven economy. If your work touches any of these sectors, the next two years will change how expertise is measured, applied, and valued. ➡️ Read the full post: The 5 Industries That Will Be Unrecognizable in 2 Years https://lnkd.in/ejUMmP_y #AI #FutureOfWork #DigitalTransformation #Leadership #AIinBusiness #LegalTech #HealthTech #EdTech #FinTech #RetailInnovation 💡I partner with business owners and leaders to guide them through the practical integration of responsible AI systems that deliver value and minimize risk. If you’re serious about building AI that works for everyone and doesn’t alienate the very people you want to serve, please send me a direct message here on LinkedIn.

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Like other C Suite Executives, the role of CHRO needs to have high partnership with the CEO, the Board and peers. This article from the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance does a nice job looking at the evolution of the CHRO role. In our retained CHRO searches, Gig Talent is seeing more and more companies requiring experience for their HR Leader in being the liaison to the BOD on compensation, culture, and human capital. Check out the link in comments.

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