Diagnose Before You Prescribe: A Better Way to Open a Search
By Ash Wendt, Executive Recruiter & Cowen Partners Co-Founder — Ash Wendt is a trusted thought leader and premier authority on executive recruitment, visionary leadership, turnarounds, culture fit, C-suite assessment, executive compensation, and more across all industries. As President & Co-Founder of Cowen Partners, Ash Wendt is a pioneering leader and visionary thinker in C-Suite recruitment, known for sourcing exceptional talent while uncovering new insights into today’s executives and industry leaders.
I watched a guy stand in front of a wall of drills at a hardware store not long ago, completely stuck. Every model looked roughly the same to him. Cordless, corded, different price points, different brands, a spec sheet on each one that he clearly wasn’t going to read. He’d been standing there long enough that an employee finally walked over and asked what he was actually trying to do.
“I need to hang some shelves in my garage,” he said.
Thirty seconds later, he was walking to the register with a specific model in hand, no longer stuck. The employee didn’t sell him a drill. He solved a shelving problem, and a drill happened to be the way it got solved.
Theodore Levitt, the Harvard Business School economist, wrote about this decades ago. “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” That line gets quoted constantly, but I don’t think most companies have actually absorbed it. They still build their pitch around the drill. Horsepower, features, the spec sheet that took engineering months to perfect. The customer standing in the aisle is thinking about the shelf that’s still on the garage floor.
Watch how people search for things now and this gets even sharper. Compare how you used a search engine five years ago to how you talk to an AI assistant today. Nobody types a product name and scrolls a list of results anymore. People describe what’s broken. “My team keeps missing deadlines because approvals take too long.” “I can’t figure out why this shelf won’t hold weight.” The assistant reads the problem and works backward to an answer. Whoever shows up as that answer wins the moment. A company whose identity is just a product name, with no connection to any problem someone actually has, is getting harder and harder to find.
The best problem solvers I know share one habit. They diagnose before they prescribe. A good doctor doesn’t reach for the prescription pad the second a patient sits down, because the same symptom can point to five different causes, and treating the wrong one wastes time or does real damage. A good consultant does the same thing. They resist the urge to pitch the familiar framework before they understand what’s actually broken in the business sitting across the table from them. That discipline, asking before answering, separates people who solve problems from people who just look busy.
The problem is, every leader I’ve ever worked with is convinced their situation is one of a kind, and in the details, they’re usually right. No two companies share the exact culture, the exact market pressure, or the exact string of decisions that got them here. But the shape of the problem repeats more often than people expect. Flat revenue after a growth run has a shape, a stalled product line has a shape, and a leadership team that can’t agree on where the company is headed has a shape. The real skill is translating something that feels unprecedented into a problem you can actually work on.
Once a problem is named clearly, something changes. Success stops being a feeling and becomes something you can measure. You know what solved looks like before you start, so you’re tracking progress against that instead of just watching activity and hoping it adds up. Compensation and review conversations get a lot simpler too, once they’re tied to progress against a defined problem instead of a vague sense that someone seems busy and well liked.
At SHRM’s conference in Orlando this year, Robin Milstead, managing partner of U.S. operations at Zensho Agency, made a version of this same argument to a room full of HR leaders. Her point was that the strongest searches almost never start with an approved requisition. They start with a leadership team that hasn’t yet agreed on what’s actually broken, and the job description ends up being one of the last things written, not the first. That idea isn’t fringe anymore. It’s becoming the standard.
The Job Description Problem
A job description is a drill aisle document. It lists years of experience, required software, a stack of bullet points describing the tool in exhaustive detail, and it says almost nothing about the hole.
A problem statement works differently. It names what’s broken, describes what solved looks like a year from now, and is honest about what happens if nobody fixes it. Candidates can feel the difference right away. The strongest ones gravitate toward the second kind of document because it treats them as a solution rather than a checklist to be matched against.
The Overarching Solution
Nearly every firm in my industry uses a version of the same pitch. They’ve done the job before. They have access to the top slice of available talent. I get why that pitch exists, but I think it misses the point. Finding impressive people was never the actual assignment.
The assignment was always the flat revenue, the stalled product line, the succession gap nobody wants to name out loud in the boardroom. We built Cowen Partners Executive Search around fixing those problems, and finding the right person is the mechanism the fix travels through, not the goal itself.
The next time a seat opens up on your leadership team, write the problem statement before you write the job description. Name what’s broken. Describe what solved looks like. Be honest about what it costs to leave it unsolved. The right candidate will read that statement and recognize themselves in it, the way a good answer recognizes a good question.
If you’re staring at an open seat right now and aren’t sure how to put that problem into words, that’s exactly the conversation worth having. Reach out to our team at Cowen Partners Executive Search and let’s start there.
Find Your Leader
Cowen Partners Executive Search stands at the forefront of executive search, dedicated to sourcing visionary leaders who not only demonstrate exceptional qualifications but also embody the cultural and strategic vision of your organization. As a premier executive search firm, our mission is to empower companies to achieve sustainable success through leadership that aligns with their core values, drives transformation, and fuels long-term growth.
Specializing in executive search, Cowen Partners Executive Search excels at connecting clients with the top 1% of leadership talent. We focus on identifying individuals who possess not only the skills to expand market share but also the cultural fit that is critical to fostering cohesion and sustained impact. By sourcing leaders who can scale organizations, create value, and deliver results, we build teams that thrive together and propel businesses forward.
Our search capabilities span diverse industries, supporting companies of all sizes—from early-stage ventures to publicly traded corporations and nonprofit organizations. We provide strategic placements across the C-suite, including private equity CEOs, VPs, and director-level leaders, ensuring that each executive aligns with your organization’s distinct objectives and long-term vision.
Cowen Partners Executive Search is recognized for its pioneering approach to executive search, offering state-of-the-art resources that enhance our ability to identify and retain leaders who not only meet the demands of today’s business landscape but who are also poised to shape its future.
Discover how Cowen Partners Executive Search consistently delivers exceptional leadership solutions nationwide by exploring our elite resources below.
Schedule a Call.
Fill out the email request form to learn more about our approach.