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Precedent

How it works

Keep the search clear while it is live. Keep the learning when it ends.

Precedent keeps one current view of the search and updates it as new evidence appears. When the work is finished, the useful lessons can be reviewed and kept for later.

At the working level, Precedent supports the full search: from brief and market mapping through candidate discovery, assessment, stakeholder alignment and closing. Underneath that work, it keeps evidence, judgment and learning connected so each decision improves the next one.

What happens underneath the work

  1. 01Current Search
  2. 02New Evidence
  3. 03What It May Mean
  4. 04Human Judgment
  5. 05Decision
  6. 06Outcome
  7. 07What We Learned
  8. 08Useful Experience Kept
  9. 09Better Next Decision

The loop closes: what the firm keeps from one search shapes the start of the next.

Current search

Know what changed, and what did not.

Not every candidate comment or client reaction should change the search. Precedent helps the team tell a small signal from something that genuinely changes the brief or approach.

  1. 01

    No Change

    Useful information, but the current search still makes sense.

  2. 02

    Monitor

    Worth watching. Too early to act.

  3. 03

    Test

    Something may be changing. Check it deliberately.

  4. 04

    Recalibrate

    The evidence supports changing part of the search.

  5. 05

    Reset

    The underlying brief or search direction needs to be reconsidered.

Evidence

Keep facts, interpretation and judgment separate.

This sounds simple, but it prevents a lot of bad search decisions. A candidate comment is not automatically a market fact. One stakeholder’s opinion is not automatically the client’s position.

  1. 01What was actually said or supplied
  2. 02What we can establish from it
  3. 03What we think it may mean
  4. 04The consultant or talent leader’s judgment
  5. 05What the firm chooses to keep for future use
  1. 01

    What was actually said or supplied

    The original source, with where it came from.

  2. 02

    What we can establish from it

    The facts and claims we can trace back to that source.

  3. 03

    What we think it may mean

    A view, clearly marked as a view and not a fact.

  4. 04

    The consultant or talent leader’s judgment

    The accountable human call, made with all of the above in view.

  5. 05

    What the firm chooses to keep for future use

    The lessons worth finding again on a later search.

This page gives the shape of the approach. We share the detail once we're talking with a firm directly.

Built for teams that want each executive search to make the next one better.

We’ll look at how you currently manage live searches, candidate evidence, client or stakeholder decisions, past search experience and completed-search learning. Then we can decide whether Precedent is useful.

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