Talent Talk

Executive Search and Leadership Insights (Page 2)

Articles 13 to 24 of 125 in the Talent Talk archive.

Page 2 of 10

Articles from September 2025 to April 2026

Adastrum ConsultingApr 164 min read

Successful in a Successful Business: And Why That’s Not Enough

I interviewed someone this week who has spent 31 years at the same organisation Fast tracked early in his career. Senior roles. MBA. Extremely well qualified. Articulate. Impressive in every measurable way. He was positioning himself as a transformation leader. Now, I’m not in the game of criticising anyone, or framing things negatively for my own gain. But my own personal observation here could save a board millions and years of wasted momentum.

The Absence of Product-Thinking in the Boardroom.

Adastrum ConsultingApr 165 min read

Technology Leadership

The Absence of Product-Thinking in the Boardroom.

Consider the last board meeting where AI featured in the strategy deck. The slides were polished. The use cases were compelling. The vendor had impressive references. Perhaps you even approved the budget.

The EQ Test: How to Hire for Emotional Intelligence Without Guesswork

Adastrum ConsultingApr 163 min read

Executive Search

The EQ Test: How to Hire for Emotional Intelligence Without Guesswork

Your next great leader may not be the sharpest speaker, but they will almost certainly be the best listener. We are good at measuring technical skill and cognitive ability. These are the table stakes for any executive role. Yet we still hire leaders with flawless CVs who create dysfunctional teams. This gap between competence and effectiveness is where value is destroyed.

Adastrum ConsultingJan 265 min read

Executive Search

A Technology Leadership Review of 2025

Leadership performance in 2025 is being judged on evidence, not assertion. Boards, people leaders, and investors now have clearer data on where executive hiring is failing and which traits genuinely correlate with success. We can also see how inclusive hiring is evolving and how UK plc is progressing on representation.

Product-Led Starts at the Top: Why Leadership Needs a Customer Compass

Adastrum ConsultingDec 164 min read

Technology Leadership

Product-Led Starts at the Top: Why Leadership Needs a Customer Compass

You would not launch a new product without first understanding the user. So why build or sustain a leadership team without anchoring it around the customer? In too many organisations, the executive team still debates internal capacity or delivery dates. The people who pay your bills exist only as abstract figures in presentations. That kind of disconnect costs more than time. It weakens outcomes and magnifies wasted investment. Let's explore what a better approach looks like in practice.

The Leadership Health Check: Is Your Executive Team Built for 2026?

Adastrum ConsultingDec 54 min read

Executive Search

The Leadership Health Check: Is Your Executive Team Built for 2026?

Trust in senior leaders is also under strain. Only 14% of UK workers say they have faith in senior leaders’ decisions. That erosion shows up in slower adoption of change, more challenge behind the scenes and ultimately a higher cost of making anything stick. In this environment, the most important question is not "Is our strategy right?". A better question is, "Is the leadership system at the top capable of delivering it?".

Fractional Firepower: Why Interim Isn't a Stopgap

Adastrum ConsultingNov 283 min read

Hiring Solutions

Fractional Firepower: Why Interim Isn't a Stopgap

When your business faces a critical inflection point, whether it’s a digital transformation, a turnaround, or a scale-up that has just secured funding, you can’t afford 12 months of drift. Spending that time recruiting, onboarding, and hoping the new hire finds their feet will only slow you down. What you need is precision. What you need is fractional firepower.

Adastrum ConsultingNov 143 min read

Hiring Solutions

The Hidden Team Cost of a Mis-Hire

Mis-hiring is the silent landmine beneath your high-performing team. It’s not just a bad hire. It’s a culture destabiliser. A trust eroder. A progress killer. It may feel safe to chalk it up as “just one wrong person, ” but recent data suggests the financial and relational toll is far heavier. A mis-hire can cost up to 30 % of the employee’s first-year earnings, including lost productivity, recruitment, onboarding, and disruption. So when an executive does not fit and the cracks start showing.

The Character Equation: Hiring Beyond Competence

Adastrum ConsultingOct 314 min read

Executive Search

The Character Equation: Hiring Beyond Competence

What’s 2+2 in leadership hiring? The answer isn’t always 4. Especially when you forget to account for the hidden variables: character and context. Almost 50 to 70% of new executives fail within 18 months, not for lack of skill but because hiring often overlooks character, cultural fit, and adaptability. We often think of hiring as a simple maths problem. You line up competence with experience and expect to find your next great leader. Except it rarely works out that neatly.

Culture Fit vs Culture Add - Rethinking Team Compatibility

Adastrum ConsultingOct 173 min read

Hiring Solutions

Culture Fit vs Culture Add - Rethinking Team Compatibility

Are you hiring for comfort or for progress? It’s an easy trap to fall into. You sit across from a candidate who reminds you of yourself ten years ago. Or maybe they mirror someone on your team who’s been successful. They “just feel right.” That’s the comfort zone of culture fit. It feels safe. It feels smooth. But here’s the risk: If everyone looks the same, thinks the same, and solves problems the same way, fresh ideas never surface.

Adastrum ConsultingOct 34 min read

Technology Leadership

So, You Want to Be Product Led

Boardrooms no longer set the pace, the market does. Strategy now starts at the exact moment your product (or service) fails to meet the mark: the unrenewed contract, the frustrated customer call, the competitor who closes the deal you were sure was yours. The companies winning today anchor every decision, investment, and hire around their product’s ability to deliver value that customers can feel and measure.

The Hidden Cost of Rushed Hires: How to Slow Down to Go Faster

Adastrum ConsultingSep 195 min read

Hiring Solutions

The Hidden Cost of Rushed Hires: How to Slow Down to Go Faster

The champagne glasses were still clinking when the cracks began to show. A star executive had been hired at lightning speed, hailed as the catalyst for change. Within half a year, departments were working at cross purposes, key metrics were falling like dominoes, and the exit package was costing more than the company’s last major project. So the real question for leaders is this: does moving fast on hiring truly put you ahead, or does it quietly set you back months and millions?