What Is an Executive Search Firm?  When Should Organizations Retain One?

What Is an Executive Search Firm? An executive search firm provides specialized, hands-on recruitment services designed to identify, contact, and cultivate candidates that possess the skills, talents, experience, and character that clients have identified as crucial to their success.  At OE Consulting, we combine our executive search practice with decades […]

A Guide to Different Types of Consulting Services

What Is Consulting, and Who Needs It? Consulting has become a catch-all term loosely referring to the provision of business advice across a range of issues, but it is much more than this.  Consulting engagements are typically designed to solve focused and specific challenges for clients, using experts in problem-solving. […]

Understanding the Difference Between Executive Search vs. Recruitment

The terms executive search and recruitment are often used interchangeably, even within the industry. They are, however, different in important ways. Put succinctly, recruitment is best suited to finding multiple entry and mid-level positions for common roles. Executive search is best applied to senior, specialized, unusual, or otherwise hard-to-find roles. […]

Consulting vs. Advising

While both consulting and advising involve bringing in experts for strategic problem-solving, these services differ in a few key ways. Consulting engagements are typically designed to solve focused and specific challenges for clients. Advising engagements are generally longer-term and more systemic. An advisor may spend many months or years helping […]

Questions to Ask Your Executive Search Firm

How to Choose an Executive Search Firm — Ask The Right Questions If you don’t already have a go-to partner, choosing an executive search firm can produce justified anxiety. The fees are significant, and a poor outcome is extremely costly. Having a clear idea of what you want in a […]

Call it What it is: Power

By Arthur Combs THESIS We have observed that defining power, methods of sharing power, and reinforcing these practices through meaningful performance management, can be a starting point for greater productivity, talent retention, and workplace wellbeing.    CONTEXT Consensus over command-and-control. It’s become axiomatic that many Global 500 companies are finding [...]

Meaning and Work Series: Stephanie Cohn Rupp

We continue our Meaning and Work series with Stephanie Cohn Rupp. “Find your conviction and determine ways to pursue that. Keep an open mind about what that looks like.” What she does: Provides strategic, operational, and systems-level leadership within the impact investing sector, in order to deliver social and environmental […]

Client Spotlight: Community Vision Capital & Consulting

In 2018, the Northern California Community Loan Fund (NCCLF) Board of Directors approved an ambitious, paradigm-shifting Strategic Plan, with economic and racial equity at the center.  The Loan Fund has been in business since 1987, as a pillar of the San Francisco community development ecosystem. Upon approval of the Strategic [...]

Reflecting on “Not Another Diversity Panel: Why a Technical Approach to DEI is not Working” 

Co-Authored by Monica Walls and Arthur Combs On May 29, S&C hosted ~100 participants to learn from three accomplished leaders: Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, Dmitri Belser, and Cynthia Nimmo. We want to thank our panelists for facilitating an excellent discussion.    We’ve summarized 6 highlights of what we learned below.   1. […]

Purpose Driven? If You Cannot Define it, Probably Not

Any organization that claims to be purpose, impact, or mission driven had better define its terms. “Purpose driven” has become a common, but poorly defined phrase for many organizations in the impact sector. We challenged ourselves to think critically about how we define purpose, and what being a purpose driven […]