Chairing high-growth companies: getting the best from CEOs, investor-directors and NEDs

Summary:
Seasoned Investor, Dawn Marriott, discusses her experience in Chairing high growth companies. Dawn Marriott is a partner at HG, a private equity firm, where she chairs two portfolio companies - Geomatikk and team.blue. Dawn is also a board member of Citation and Aztecs, where she was previously CEO. Formerly, she was Chair of Hometree and Kinapse and Chief Operating Officer at Capita.

Main Body of Content:
Dawn Marriott, Partner at HG Capital shares her thoughts on the role of the Chair in ensuring CEO success, the vital importance of referencing for any hire, and finding the right size functional experience for any fast growing technology company.

➕Focus on the CEO: “I always try to keep it as simple as possible. My job is to make sure the chief executive is successful … Sometimes that means being hands on … because maybe it's an area of deep expertise for you, but not for them. Equally, it might be an area where making them successful means getting out of the way and not showing up and not asking for constant reports on things because you're taking their time.”

➕Invest in references: “I see most people falling down when it comes to referencing. Quite honestly, that's probably one of the most valuable parts of any hiring process. And I don't just mean send an email out and say, ‘can you confirm the dates that this person worked here?’ I mean a proper, structured conversation with at least five to ten people about what a particular candidate is like.”

➕Right-size functional experience: “I’m not sure I would describe any technology as moving so fast that no one could keep up with it, because I would argue that the executive teams need to keep up with it … the board isn't there to drive the innovation, per se. That's the job of the executives. But they're there to support, encourage, or challenge. So having somebody technically competent enough to do that, at least on a par with the management team, is very important.”

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