When you’re company is having problems, solutions often are delivered by new management, from outside your organization, people who bring a new perspective to the work. Photo: David Sanabria | FlickrCC.
When a company sets out to make a new hire, they often want to promote employees they already have who they trust. But if a company is struggling, sometimes the best way to bring on new management is to hire externally.
An externally-hired manager will be able to see any problems the company faces more clearly than the people already living with those problems, and they may be able to come up with better, more permanent solutions to them.
Few people know how to manage a company better than Thomas Weisel of Stifel Financial. One of his first companies, Robertson, Colman, Siebel & Weisel, was considered one of “the four horsemen” of West Coast technology finance.
Since then, Weisel has bought, sold, and restructured many businesses. Indeed, Stifel believes that the only way to move forward as a business is to branch into other kinds of operations and to assist the growth of other companies. To go forward, Stifel had to find outside opportunities.
“We can’t be the kind of firm we want to be without being in tech, consumer, and healthcare,” said Ron Kruszewski, CEO of Stifel after the company acquired Thomas Weisel Partners. “It expands us into these key growth sectors of the global economy.”
While hiring from within can often seem like the easier solution to staffing problems, only a pair of fresh eyes will be able to see what’s going on with a company.
And current staff may just not have the right experience for a newly-developed position. One person cannot split their skillset into two jobs—sometimes it’s better to just double-up on staff who have that experience.
Additionally, a study by Bidwell’s indicates that external hires will usually have more experience and be better educated, though they have a higher risk of failure in new positions than current internal staff.
Best of all, reaching outward to find new employees can help your company grow for the better, as external hires can view projects with fresh eyes. Sometimes, a new management style can help eliminate existing problems.
“Fresh blood can often revitalize a team, and it’s good to bring someone in who has new ideas and a different perspective,” says Tracy Cashman, partner and general manager at the Information Technology Search division at WinterWyman, a recruitment firm.
The bottom line is to find and hire the best talent you can find, internal or external—but more often, external hires can shake things up enough to affect necessary change.
