How Would Professional Recruiters Go About Hiring the Next President of the United States (POTUS) and Address the Underlying Issues?

Whether you are emboldened, amused or upset by the U.S. presidential candidates’ demagoguery, you may well agree that this is an exceedingly important election. We are facing unresolved domestic and global issues and all in the middle of a worldwide pandemic; so how can voters make the best choice? 

Voters might find it helpful to take a look at how Executive Search consultants approach selecting leaders.  One resource is our POTUS white paper that gives voters a proven methodology from the world of Executive Search to reach their own conclusions: How Would Professional Recruiters Go About Hiring the Next President of the United States (POTUS) and Address the Underlying Issues? (click here)

Executive Search firms help organizations select leaders every day. We’ve seen that in the absence of a well-designed process companies often make bad choices. Why is that? It’s because humans tend to make decisions based on emotional factors; it’s literally how our brains are wired. The choice of POTUS follows the same unhappy dynamics; many voters key in on likeability factors including idealistic campaign promises, how a candidate looks and talks, celebrity status, and so on. They end up voting for a President who doesn’t get the job done.

Top Gun Ventures Shares Three Secrets from the Business World of Executive Search: 

• Lesson 1 — Focus on the Endgame (What do you want the next POTUS to achieve, where should she/he take the country next?)
• Lesson 2 — Be Clear about the Success Criteria (What does it take to reach the endgame, the world you want your children to inherit and be fulfilled in? What does success look like and how would it impact you, your family and the country?)
• Lesson 3 — Use the Checklist of Success Criteria (Checklists work for pilots and surgeons to save lives, so why not use them for selecting the next POTUS?)

New Success Criteria Added:

One of the new success criteria for this year’s Checklist is for the President to have the ‘Ability and Disposition to Successfully Lead the Country Through an Unexpected and Not Seen Before Crisis’.  What is otherwise known in the business world as a Black Swan event or, more technically, a "Silent Risk". 

This is an accelerating trend as we have seen President George Bush face the 911 crisis, President Barak Obama address the financial crash and now most recently President Donald Trump with the Covid-19 pandemic. None of these national crises were expected or on their agendas before they took office, nor discussed as part of the selection criteria by their political parties or the voters.  The probability of the next President facing another unexpected national crisis is now higher.

Two other new success requirements, managing ‘National Discords’ and ‘National Inequalities”, were added this year as they have become exacerbating issues that are getting worse and may flare up over the next 4 years to become debilitating for the country if not corrected and reversed.  The worsening National Discords include Policing, Violent Crime, Gun Policy, Immigration and Climate Change. National Inequalities are in two main areas, the first being discrimination on race, ethnicity, gender and LGBTQIA and the second being economic with the ever-widening gap between the haves and the have nots.

The paper illustrates the methods used by Executive Search professionals to identify a full set of criteria necessary for on-the-job success and shows how some of the best Presidents from the past would rate against this criterion (George Washington, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan).

The Bottom Line - We Will Be on the Right Path if ‘We the People’ as Voters Get To:

• Look first at what we want the POTUS to achieve and how we would recognize success
• Look beyond the emotional criterion of likeability to a full Checklist of key success criteria

The selection of a leader in business or politics is based on an impassioned debate about the best person for the job at hand.  We may not always agree on the best candidate or on the best approach the POTUS should take but we can all agree that we don’t want a leader who performs poorly.  Unfortunately, this has become an underlying issue leaving voters choosing among less than ideal options.

Addressing the Underlying Issues of Underperformance and Weakening Talent Pool:

This is the fourth time we have issued this paper and the underlying problems have remained the same.  As such, we felt compelled to offer some insights and ideas to address the issues.

Each time (2008, 2012, 2016, 2020), the pool of candidates for voters to select from was not strong against the POTUS Checklist success criteria, rating average and some worse versus top performers.  As a result, ‘we the people’ selected an underperforming POTUS candidate into the most challenging role in the world and the talent pool we are selecting from is getting worse each election cycle, not better. We are in a decline on POTUS leadership.

This is an exacerbating issue. Voters and political parties need to raise the bar on POTUS expectations/requirements and be acceptable to the level and cadence of changes a top performer will bring them, otherwise this trend of hiring underperformers will continue with devastating and perhaps unrecoverable results.

In the business world, when we meet a client in this situation, needing a new CEO and the last 3 have underperformed, we know something systemic is wrong with the evaluation process and talent pool they are looking at and will work with the client to address the root cause before starting the search.

Often, rather than acknowledging the CEO performance issue, clients will have gone from one type of leader to the opposite.  This cycle is a red flag and not dissimilar to what we see in our political system.  If you have wondered why your party did not get elected or re-elected you might look at POTUS ‘performance’ as much as ‘policy’. If policies had been implemented more effectively and you were on the path to your endgame would that have changed the outcome.

A key insight explored in the paper is that the eligibility criteria for the POTUS role is outdated and has nothing to do with performance or ability to be successful in the role of leading the whole country.  All you need to qualify for POTUS is to be born in the US, resided here for 14 years and be 35 years or older. We believe most voters would agree that these are minimal requirements to become the President of the most powerful country in the world.

Another approach explored to improve and increase the POTUS talent pool is to SEARCH not FETCH; search for the best candidates not fetch from just those raising their hand. We have 100’s if not 1000’s of leaders in the U.S. that could meet these new stringent performance based POTUS requirements but because no one is currently searching them out, or developing them for the POTUS role, they are never going to be in the POTUS talent pool for voters to choose from. 

The Paper looks further into the underlying issues of hiring underperformers and a weakening POTUS talent pool and offers an example of what a recommendation to address the root cause might look like.

Equally important, the paper draws attention to the critical need for top performers in the POTUS role, GameChangers who are adaptable, creative, bold, act with urgency and rate above average in all of the success criteria.   It asks, what would be the impact of electing a GameChanging President?  How would you recognize success? Would it be 5 times or 10 times better than in the past? How would your family and the country be better off if “we the people” elected a GameChanger versus an underperforming leader? 

The value to be gained from the views of Executive Search consultants is that they will tell you how it is, not what you want to hear. We hope these insights and lessons shared can be of help to voters.

Why We Should Still Be Optimistic:

We all have the opportunity to base our vote on a disciplined process using the proven power of a good Checklist of success criteria.  Not just for POTUS but for Senators, Congressmen, Mayors and other elected officials. We know from our experience in the business world that this approach leads to a less emotional, more robust, discussion and ultimately a better choice of leader. 

You’ll find a Checklist and guidance on how to rate the candidates in the appendix of our POTUS paper (click here). We strongly encourage you to take a moment to score the leading candidates now.

This election is of crucial importance; let’s all make the best decision.