"We have a $2 billion private equity fund that focuses on the business services, consumer, healthcare and industrial sectors. Our single greatest risk is hiring the wrong CEO to lead a business that we paid a double-digit multiple for, and that we now have to leverage so that investors can achieve expected returns. Our financial projections leave no room for mistakes.

We needed to determine if three people who had been successful in previous portfolio companies could work together as a team to turnaround another acquisition. Shields Meneley Partners interviewed each team member, put each through a set of customized assessments based on what we had identified as key business drivers, and provided feedback to us, the team, and each executive..

The team gained immediate insight into each member’s style and approach, and quickly grasped the synergy created by different skills and backgrounds. One executive was extremely creative and strategic; the second was an exceptional operating leader; and the third was a financial officer with a broad M&A background and exceptional communication skills. In a three-hour meeting facilitated by a Shields Meneley Partners’ psychologist and business advisor, they were able to drill down into motivations, values, communication preferences; styles under pressure, and who should own what decisions based on what they learned.

Within nine months, they had turned the company around, and identified two potential acquisition targets that doubled the business."

“I am the CEO of a $4 billion public company and I wasn’t satisfied with the performance of my executive team. They couldn’t 'think outside the box,' we had weak succession planning, and our attempts to hire MBAs was ineffective because they had the analytical ability, but lacked the emotional intelligence to be strong leaders. I wanted an objective approach to evaluating internal and external candidates so that we could build a management pipeline.

Several years we force-ranked each position and exited those who didn’t measure up using a 360 assessment tool. Theoretically, we were working with the best and the brightest, but operating performance didn’t show it. That’s when I was introduced to Shields Meneley Partners.

Dan DeWitt first assessed eight senior executives using a set of validated instruments, one-on-one interviews, and customized case studies to measure critical thinking, management, leadership skills, and personality. He predicted our top, middle and low performers with 100% accuracy. We then assessed 24 more executives and made Dan a part of our interview team for all final senior hires. We have since benchmarked high-performing characteristics against a proprietary database of 250 elite executives and developed our own proprietary performance profiles.

We started seeing results almost immediately. We reduced hiring costs, improved operating performance, and have established a new level of performance and accountability in the organization.”