The Lechley Brief
If you read these essays, you will like the Brief. My weekly email on leadership, talent and what is moving in UK construction and infrastructure, in your inbox every Saturday morning.
Insights Hub
Essays on leadership, hiring and careers in UK construction and infrastructure, and on the people who run its programmes.
The contractor that chose to stop contracting
Durkan Holdings has walked away from contracting entirely after fifty years, blaming regulatory risk rather than a lack of work. What that decision means for where the industry's compliance-savvy senior talent goes next, and what it should tell you about the risk you're paid to carry.
The hiring decision is usually made by minute five
Panels believe they are weighing the whole interview. Most have already decided, and spend the rest of the hour confirming it.
The first thing you lose when you become a director is bad news.
The moment you have authority over someone's pay or their next role, the account you get from them changes. Building a route for the truth to reach you is a director's job, not a personality trait.
You don't get promoted for starting things. You get promoted for finishing them.
The QSs who get the tap on the shoulder are rarely the ones who launch the most initiatives. They're the ones who chase the retention nobody else will chase, and actually close it out.
The CV is the wrong document
The CV rules senior candidates out well and rules them in badly. Three calls in one week showed why executive search should be built on evidence, not employers.
The ten non-negotiables: a spec template for senior hires
The one-page spec I agree with every client before a name goes out: ten things you can evidence, five you would like, and the questions that test them.
The instinct that got you promoted will wreck you as a director
The skill that got you promoted, giving fast right answers, is the same skill that keeps your team dependent on you. Here's what to do instead.
You spent six months hiring them and six days landing them.
Boards run immaculate six-month searches and then abandon the hire on day one. Senior placements rarely fail on capability. They fail on the landing, and almost nobody resources it.
I have never been taken through a bad reference. That should worry you.
Reference checks at senior level have become a ritual that confirms decisions instead of testing them. Here is how to take one properly.
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