Executive search Leadership integration
We partner with boards, CEOs and investors in appointing senior leaders and scarce experts across technology-driven industries, and can support their integration once they arrive.
Searches across the Netherlands, Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East.
The Lumen partner-led approach
In technology-driven businesses, a mis-hire costs far more than the search fee. It can lead to delayed milestones, missed customer commitments, setbacks in industrialisation and a gradual loss of investor confidence. By the time the impact becomes visible, the organisation may already have lost the one asset a board can never recover: time.
The Lumen partner-led approach is built to get the match right the first time. Where time to impact matters, the Leadership Launchpad accelerates a new leader’s landing.
Why and which search partner
For most hiring, a strong internal team is the better choice. A senior role in a scarce market is different. The leaders who matter are not looking, and in an ecosystem where suppliers, customers and competitors all know each other, they cannot be seen talking to another company. A job advertisement does not overcome this either. It attracts hundreds of applications, many written with AI to mirror the profile. But not the ones you are looking for.
We work the other way round. We map the market, assess every relevant leader on track record, competitors included, and approach them in confidence, sometimes before the role exists. In a close-knit ecosystem, a direct approach to a leader at a competitor or partner company can touch on sensitive interests; an independent partner can explore fit without exposing either side. You meet only the few who pass our evaluation, and at the offer we hold the neutral seat. Your team stays in the lead; we reach the leaders it cannot.
Global firms offer a strong brand and an office in every region. Their model also depends on scale. The partner who wins the mandate often hands the candidate calls to a regional partner and a research desk. And the more clients a firm serves, the more companies it cannot recruit from. In technology markets where the best candidates sit at a handful of companies, that shrinks the pool before the search begins.
We run fewer mandates at a time, so the same partner carries the whole assignment. The partner who takes your brief is the one who calls the candidates, evaluates them and mediates the offer between both sides. Nothing gets lost in a handover, and your search never competes for attention in a crowded portfolio. Our client base is focused, so few companies are closed to your search, and we name them at the start. Reach is not the trade-off: our searches run across all regions, without a regional hand-off.
The Lumen partner-led approach
The partner who takes on your mandate personally leads and executes the entire search, from the first stakeholder conversation through to the successful appointment. That same partner conducts every stakeholder discussion, engages directly with candidates and leads each evaluation. These interactions are never delegated to a consultant, a research team, or an AI agent.
Technology enables us to combine speed with senior attention. Mapping and market intelligence that once required a full team can now be completed in days, allowing us to focus our time where it adds the most value: informed judgement, direct candidate engagement and meaningful conversations.
Candidates are evaluated on merit and capabilities against the assignment rather than an abstract ideal. Our matching is regardless of gender, age, race, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or any other protected characteristic.
Select a stage for detail. A typical search runs 8 to 12 weeks from kick-off to acceptance.
Sectors & roles
Technology runs through all five; in the fifth it meets capital and risk. The roles are rarely only technical. General management, R&D, commercial, operations, finance and IT leadership, as well as regulation and risk, all sit on the same path. What they share is that the outcome rests with a small number of people who are credible in their field and sound in judgement about the business and its people. From senior management and expert roles to C-suite and board.
Where precision engineering has to scale without losing control of the supply chain.
Roles we fill
Where the product is code, revenue has to recur, and trust in data is the licence to grow.
Roles we fill
Where scientific credibility and commercial discipline have to coexist under regulatory scrutiny.
Roles we fill
Where the energy system is rebuilt while it keeps running, and leadership has to carry both.
Roles we fill
Where capital meets risk, and judgement about both is the product.
Roles we fill
Insights
Article
What it takes for a new leader to land in a team whose norms, expectations and working styles differ from their own.
Riemer Ike Fokkema
Article
How strategic talent planning goes beyond conventional workforce planning to support accelerated growth in scale-ups.
Riemer Ike Fokkema
Article
Why the composition of a leadership team deserves the same evidence and discipline as any other strategic decision.
Riemer Ike Fokkema
Partners
Every senior appointment starts with one question: what leadership or expertise is needed now, and what will make it succeed? Our partners bring search, matching, integration and coaching together in one coherent way of working, with close stakeholder alignment, direct candidate engagement and senior judgement from briefing to landing. For clients and candidates alike, that means high-touch execution, a low-friction process and greater confidence in both the appointment and the outcome.
Paul has experience across a wide range of sectors, with a focus on high-tech manufacturing, semiconductors, and technology-driven organisations, working for multinationals, research institutes, universities and scale-ups. His focus has broadened from finance and IT into engineering, commercial, product, and operations leadership and experts.
Riemer brings global HR leadership from the chemical, automotive and semiconductor sectors into executive search. He builds technical and industrial teams where capability, culture and execution must work as one.
Roël has experience across a wide range of sectors, with a focus on high-tech manufacturing, semiconductors, and IT-driven organisations, working for multinationals, research institutes, universities and scale-ups. His background in technical business administration and his expertise in executive coaching add depth to his assessment of leadership qualities, motivations, and how well professionals align with an organisation’s ambition and culture.
Frank places leaders in banking, credit, private equity and energy, drawing on more than twenty years in executive search. He started in investment banking in the global energy sector and works where technology, capital and execution meet.
Start a confidential conversation
Contact a partner directly or write to info@lumen-search.com.
Insights · Article
Riemer Ike Fokkema
Onboarding explains the organisation. Integration decides whether the leader lands.
Most executives arrive to an announcement, compliance training, a strategy template and a list of stakeholders. The assumption is that a capable leader will integrate on their own. The evidence says otherwise. Research puts the share of new leaders who fail within 18 months at 30 to 50 percent, and estimates the cost of a failed executive at 6 to 24 times salary. Less visible, and often more damaging, are the key people who leave because they never connected with the new leader.
Edgar Schein of MIT describes three layers of culture that every newcomer works through.
Most leaders master the first layer quickly. The third can take years, and that is where integrations fail.
In a multicultural team, every layer is harder to read. Teamwork in the US tends to mean each person doing what they are best at and paid for. In Japan it can mean finishing the job together regardless of seniority, down to cleaning the machine after a test.
Take a new leader asked to set mission, vision and strategy. Team members from a hierarchical background expect direction: know the subject, set the course, define what you expect. Colleagues from an egalitarian background expect to shape the vision together first. Choose the wrong approach and you can lose half the team in your first quarter, without anyone saying so.
The Leadership Launchpad complements existing onboarding. It works with the new leader and the core team together, using proven instruments such as Prophet and The Culture Map.
A senior appointment is an investment of a year's salary or more before the leader has delivered anything. The Launchpad protects it: shorter time to impact, fewer unexpected departures in the team, and a leader with the trust needed to execute. It costs a fraction of a failed appointment, and it belongs in every senior hire into an international team.
Insights · Article
Riemer Ike Fokkema
Succession planning maps the band you have. Scaling needs the orchestra you are becoming.
In most scale-ups, talent comes third. Capital comes first, then making the technology work at volume. When people finally get attention, hiring tends to be opportunistic: a gap opens, a role is filled, the next gap opens.
Classic succession planning starts from today's organisation. List the key positions, name who is ready to step in. In a scale-up that answers the wrong question. The structure will change before the plan is ever used, and almost every role is critical on the way. Everyone knows it, so the exercise shrinks into a governance ritual that fills the board pack and changes nothing.
The real challenge is moving from a small group of specialists to a complete, multidisciplinary organisation: from a band to an orchestra, and sometimes to several orchestras across continents. So start from the organisation your roadmap requires in two to three years, not the one on today's chart.
Work it out the way a conductor would. Which sections does the roadmap depend on: commercial, product management, operations, supply chain, finance? Within each section, what level of mastery is needed, from principal to section player, and how many of each? The result is a target composition the board can test against the business plan.
Then hold that score against the people already on stage. This is the hardest step, because founding teams are loyal to each other. Give people a stage and observe them: business and product reviews show how someone performs under real pressure. Add structured leadership assessments or 180 and 360 degree feedback, and an outside view from someone with no stake in the current line-up. Repeat it every year. The programme changes, so the orchestra has to as well.
The difference between the target composition and the current team is your hiring plan. Treat it as a strategic investment, not a service request to HR. In scarce markets, three things decide whether you close the gap:
A growth plan without a talent plan carries a risk nobody has priced. Ask for the target composition alongside the financial model, and for an honest view of who in the current team will scale with it. Hiring the right leader a year early costs little next to a missed milestone.
Talk to a Lumen partner about the leadership your roadmap requires.
Insights · Article
Riemer Ike Fokkema
Most leadership teams are composed on instinct. Few boards would fund anything else that way.
Executive appointments still rest largely on collective intuition. The selection committee checks expertise, track record and cultural fit. Once those boxes are ticked, confirmation bias takes over: the candidate feels right, so why look further?
Because a team's performance is not set by expertise and fit alone. Research puts the share of new leaders who fail within 18 months at 30 to 50 percent. Often the cause is not capability, but how the new leader works within that particular team. That kind of failure is largely preventable.
Interviews are a weak predictor of how someone will contribute to a specific leadership dynamic. They reward the candidate who resembles the panel. The stronger the perceived fit, the more likely the appointment, even when it reinforces the blind spots the team already has. A team of five fast decision makers rarely needs a sixth. It may need the person who tests the decision before it is made.
Every executive brings a behavioural profile that shapes how they decide, influence and collaborate. Those differences determine how a team performs, yet they are rarely measured in selection. The question for a board is not only who the best candidate is, but what this team lacks and who supplies it.
This needs no costly overhaul:
The interview stays. It is simply no longer the only evidence.
You would not approve an acquisition on gut feel. A leadership team carries more of the value, and decides how the rest is executed. Validating its composition up front gives stronger teams, faster integration and a lower risk of a failed appointment, for a modest investment relative to the role.
Talk to a Lumen partner about building leadership teams beyond intuition.
The Lumen partner-led approach
The partner who takes on your mandate personally leads and executes the entire search, from the first stakeholder conversation through to the successful appointment. That same partner conducts every stakeholder discussion, engages directly with candidates and leads each evaluation. These interactions are never delegated to a consultant, a research team, or an AI agent.
Technology enables us to combine speed with senior attention. Mapping and market intelligence that once required a full team can now be completed in days, allowing us to focus our time where it adds the most value: informed judgement, direct candidate engagement and meaningful conversations.
A typical search runs 8 to 12 weeks from kick-off to acceptance, in five stages
Stage 01 · Discovery & positioning
We align and challenge stakeholders, test the market and sharpen the mandate into a candidate narrative that is clear, credible and worth a senior leader's time, answering the questions that matter before the first conversation.
Stage 02 · Mapping & outreach
Within days we build an initial market map using advanced AI tooling, qualify profiles on visible track record and calibrate the strongest matches with the hiring team. Outreach starts only when we know we are looking in the right places, and it is always done by the partner.
Stage 03 · Shortlisting & presenting
We bring forward the candidates worth a serious conversation, supported by a concise partner-written evaluation and the original CV, combining our judgement with how each leader presents their own story. Compensation insights are shared only with candidate consent and within legal boundaries.
We represent your company in the following way to candidates:
We set out the business case, the stakeholders and the tensions, so you can judge the mandate on its merits rather than on how well it is sold.
Evaluation is a two-way exploration of track record, motivation, leadership style and the conditions in which you do your best work.
You know who decides, what happens next and where you stand. Feedback comes from the partner personally, and stays confidential.
Stage 04 · Selection & closing
We advise on an efficient selection set-up, from interviews and case assignments to references, and where helpful facilitate structured comparison and decision-making. The partner supports offer strategy, negotiation and resignation management to protect both acceptance and confidentiality.
Stage 05 · Leadership Launchpad (optional)
Onboarding explains the organisation. Integration changes how people work together. New leaders are usually left to navigate hidden assumptions, team history and cultural dynamics alone; the Launchpad makes those forces visible and workable.
Decode styles, roles, values and cultural dynamics. Align expectations before assumptions harden.
Surface friction, adapt leadership strategies, reinforce collaboration.
Address unproductive patterns and align the team around a shared direction.
Workforce, succession and talent planning
Most organisations map their leadership needs one role at a time, which is why succession becomes urgent before it becomes planned. We work with boards and CEOs on the shape of the leadership team over the coming years: which capabilities the strategy actually requires, where the bench is thin, which roles have to be built rather than bought, and what the market can realistically supply and at what price.
For investors, the same work applies to a portfolio: leadership readiness before a transaction, and the build-out that follows it.