The common misgivings that many SME leaders have about blue-chip talent

As one of the leading executive search partners for SME’s across the UK, we spend a great deal of time working with our clients to find the best solutions for their leadership challenges.  While we all have a degree of conscious and unconscious bias based on our own experience, I think it is fair to say that SME’s in general look at their counterparts within the blue-chip world with more suspicion than most. 

Many conversations that we hold focus upon the perception that these individuals are unsuited to life in an SME environment due to some combination of the factors below.  Knowing that often some of the very best talent in the market is housed within the blue-chip world and that many of them are keen to break into a very different working environment, we try to refute those misgivings through our own experience of working with this group on a daily basis. 

Not being ‘hands on’ enough

This is the most common of all the concerns.  SME leaders are required to be both operational and strategic in order to be successful.  While it is true that functional leaders generally work with larger teams in blue-chip firms, the post 2008 world looks very different for them.  The light has been shone on resources like never before and most businesses have cut headcount significantly.  This has meant that individuals have been required to take on additional responsibilities and broaden their scope; the ivory tower positions of yesteryear are long gone.