McLean was mandated in December 2020 to hire a new top team for the organisation – nine posts including the Deputy Chief Executive, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Finance Officer, and Executive Director of Human Resources. It was the largest senior recruitment campaign in the organisation’s 700 year history and was a central component of taking forward its new Target Operating Model and equally pivotal to its modernisation and cultural change ambitions. The organisation represents the Square Mile, London and the UK internationally. It is a large organisation with more than 4,000 staff and a £6 billion investment portfolio and responsible for such iconic assets as Hampstead Heath, the Barbican, Smithfield Market and Tower Bridge. An organisation this complex with such disparate service lines requires an unusually experienced top team in even the most ordinary of times. In the midst of a pandemic, the need for resilient and agile leadership as well as the need for the top team to reflect London as it is today and in the future was of paramount importance in our campaign scoping, planning and execution.
Outcome: Our approach was all-encompassing and drew on our unique and broad capabilities across financial services, innovation, policy, research as well as the evolving public sector landscape. We contacted 1,460 potential candidates, which resulted in 222 applications and a long list of 80 people who were robustly assessed against real world scenarios. All nine posts were filled with what were unquestionably the best candidates, six of whom were women and two were BAME individuals.
