Steve “Axel” Foley, former Commander for the U.S. Navy’s “Blue Angels” Squadron and former Division Head at TOPGUN, presented to the 101 Executive Alliance on the topic of Deliberate Leadership...

A recent article in The Information (subscription required) has generated quite a lot of discussion in the tech industry. In the article “Help Wanted: Private Tech CFO,” the writer points to a high and relatively unmet demand for tech CFOs with IPO experience...

We recently got together with a Chief Human Resources Officer who has been a long-time client, and she shared an insightful and funny story that really resonated. Early in her career, her boss and mentor challenged her to stop being a “compliance cop” and start behaving as a businessman (well, businesswoman, in this case). “Think operationally,” he said. “Help me get business done, and use your powers for good!” Those words were exactly what she needed to hear, and that advice has served as the guiding principle throughout her career.

Everyone in the executive search business has that one, especially unfortunate assignment that they will never forget. A few years ago, we were retained to fill a critical role for a fast-growing tech company that had been acquired by a Fortune 500 corporation. Within short order, we had four incredible candidates—all actively working in great companies, but also very excited about our client and the impact that they could have in the role.

John C. Williams, President & CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, presented a lecture titled The Current Economic Forecast earlier this month at the Bishop Ranch Forum in San Ramon. The tone of Mr. Williams’ presentation was one of optimism...

Each of us is in a race. Perhaps we are racing against ourselves, trying to do better than we did last year professionally or in our personal lives. In business, we are racing against our competitors to develop the best products, solve complex issues, take market share, and provide a higher return to our investors. We cannot win the race if we always “play it safe” and stay in the slow lane. You have to speed up to pass someone, which is risky, but you can take steps to mitigate that risk and still win.

Jon Meyers from Mercer’s Human Capital division presented to our San Francisco HR Leaders group on the Future of Work and shared many valuable insights including the overwhelming number of choices in healthcare technology (slide 16) and the explosion of talent acquisition technology companies (slide 28). We encourage you to check out the presentation.

“I need somebody in here yesterday.” Like all search firms, we want to complete searches as quickly as possible with the best candidates for the job. We typically target 90 days from the day we kick off the search to when the selected executive accepts the offer. The stars have to align pretty well in order for a disciplined search to be significantly shorter than that.

At a recent HR Executive Lunch we hosted in San Francisco, a common point of discussion was finding and keeping the best talent in a highly competitive market. One Chief People Officer said it this way, “One of our biggest issues is competing against the behemoth companies for talent. We can’t compete on compensation anymore, and when the Google’s of the world are buying people, we have to offer something different.”

Looking back on 2014... California finally got some much needed rain and snow, the U.S. economy came back strong in spite of political gridlock in the nation’s capital, and Navy’s football win-streak against Army became a teenager (Fleming tried to edit this part out).

The kids are back in school, summer is officially over and the Finance team is getting ready to drive the 2015 budgeting process. Globally we are seeing increasing political instability; nationally we are seeing a slow, but sustained economic recovery, and in California the traffic tells us that the economy is recovering nicely, but we could really use some rain.

FlemingMartin co-hosted a Chief Economists Panel featuring Ted Egan, Chief Economist, City of San Francisco and Wayne Best, Chief Economist, Visa International. Every month, FlemingMartin co-hosts an HR Leaders’ Forum and a C-Suite Forum.

The kids are back in school, summer is officially over and the Finance team is getting ready to drive the 2015 budgeting process. Globally we are seeing increasing political instability; nationally we are seeing a slow, but sustained economic recovery, and in California the traffic tells us that the economy is recovering nicely, but we could really use some rain.

The kids are back in school, summer is officially over and the Finance team is getting ready to drive the 2015 budgeting process. Globally we are seeing increasing political instability; nationally we are seeing a slow, but sustained economic recovery, and in California the traffic tells us that the economy is recovering nicely, but we could really use some rain.

“During every search, I interview ‘A’ players and I interview ‘B’ players. The two types of executives conduct themselves very differently. “A” players characterize a great interview with the CEO as a very collaborative conversation actually addressing some of the company’s challenges and issues. “A” players know exactly what they want and are extremely transparent with the CEO during the interview.”

The kids are back in school, summer is officially over and the Finance team is getting ready to drive the 2015 budgeting process. Globally we are seeing increasing political instability; nationally we are seeing a slow, but sustained economic recovery, and in California the traffic tells us that the economy is recovering nicely, but we could really use some rain.

The kids are back in school, summer is officially over and the Finance team is getting ready to drive the 2015 budgeting process. Globally we are seeing increasing political instability; nationally we are seeing a slow, but sustained economic recovery, and in California the traffic tells us that the economy is recovering nicely, but we could really use some rain.