John Keller: I left the journal in July ’98. The Journal had hired me from BusinessWeek because I was beating them on too many stories. I don’t say that to brag, it was the reality, and we were a weekly to their daily. I’d work until 11 PM, midnight, I’d never let a story go. And the industry was going crazy with deregulation, the Internet, mergers every time you turned around. It was wild, a reporter’s nirvana. For nine years.

Until two senior partners from Spencer Stuart figured I could bring their firm credibility in building its Tech and Telecom practices, since I knew the industry, its movers and shakers, and everyone was reading the Journal to see what was going on. All that reporting gave me this amazing rolodex. They chased me for a couple of years. I remember the conversations, sometimes relentless, with a lot of affection. “Come on John, you gotta do this. It’s great work.” One day during one call I said you don’t understand it would be like leaving the brother/sisterhood. It’s a mission. Like leaving the priesthood. The reply: “Yeah. And they pay you like a priest.” Hahaha! I laugh everytime I think of those moments now that I have been on this playing field.

QH: Why did you decide to leave?

JJK: I didn’t do it for the money per se, even though the money was incredible. I was already feeling quite comfortable. I was being well paid at the Journal. Good salary, great profit sharing back then, bonuses when you got a big scoop. I won some big awards for my reporting. I wasn’t unhappy, my family was comfortable. But I was beginning to feel like I lived 50 lives in that world, reporting and running a desk. Earlier in my career I was part of the team that launched Communications Week, which quickly became the post-AT&T breakup global competition news bible section. It didn’t stop.

It wasn’t really that, either. I was breaking stories and doing reporting about companies that were really cracking up because of bad strategy or myopic out of touch management. At AT&T, then CEO Bob Allen cut 40,000 jobs and was called “the corporate killer;” he got a big raise the next year. A guy who’d worked there killed himself over his treatment by the company. His wife read me his suicide note. Years later, Allen messed up his succession, which finally woke up his board and a search for a new CEO was launched. There were lots of other stories like that. It was an industry in chaos as its biggest company and rivals struggled to find their place and growth path in the new global competition. In many ways the breakup of AT&T and its aftermath was the biggest Big Bang in corporate history.

I began to listen more intently to the guys from Spencer Stuart and figured maybe I could find a new mission in my work with companies, help bring in good leaders to save them, or at least get them better leadership to ensure a better run. Employees, customers and investors have to depend on leadership to perform well or new ones need to be found and fast. Knowing this solidified my decision on career 2.0. As it turned out I’ve been involved in a lot of turnarounds and transformations in telecommunications, tech and the digital and media world. I have led projects before, during and after the dotcom collapse and the Internet transformation of everything as we know it. I’ve helped find great leaders that could actually save many businesses and make life better for employees and for customers, rebooted boards of directors so they’re sharper and more diverse. I have helped build innovators that operate their businesses on powerful tech-driven platforms. There’s been a lot of turmoil, so no problem staying busy.

QH: You clearly had a deep understanding of the industry where you started in executive search. A big network of contacts. What other skills did you develop as a reporter that were useful later on?

JJK: Writing critical stories about all those CEOs helped, as well as the ones about those who were innovating, ideating a great future for businesses. As a reporter working at those levels, I had learned to respect power but not be intimidated by it, and some of these people will try to intimidate you.

I had developed an ability to network, and to build relationships in the corporate sector that I hold dear to this day. And people in the industries I covered knew I wouldn’t betray them. My sources were right up there with my family, I wouldn’t give them up if you pulled out my fingernails. Even people who wouldn’t talk to me as a reporter knew that about me. Reputation for trust was fungible from the old world to the new one.

Telling your story the right way was another great skill I found invaluable in my new world. You aren’t just finding good people for an important role. When you’re talking to someone about bringing them over as a CEO, some candidates are gonna drill down deep on the company and the work; they’re gonna drill for oil during those conversations. You have to know things cold, and be able to tell a story about the opportunity that will win them over in the best possible way. It has to work out for everyone.

And don’t underestimate being able to write clearly. People tell me they’ve never seen a job spec so well written. Colleagues sometimes ask me for writing advice, or want me to check out their work. They have helped me in many other ways, including with the transition I made.

QH: You’re raising something else I think a lot of reporters have without really knowing it. They are often gruff people, but by studying a complex situation in business or politics, environment, whatever, they understand the big picture and the motivations inside it. It’s the basis of empathy. Doing lots of interviews, you learn to think about someone else’s world, what it’s like to be them, and then ask questions they can relate to. You look for the things that get them excited, their orientation toward the world, whether that is engineering or sales or law. That empathy builds trust, gets you the best quotes, tells you what to write about. You can learn a lot, and you win trust.

JJK: Giving people that extra interest, showing that you’re curious about who they are and what they do, it matters a lot. Sometimes it can break your heart, like when that devastated wife and mother of an Eagle scout read me that suicide note of her husbands. It sears that responsibility into your brain forever if you were raised right.

Sometimes the trust comes in ways you don’t expect. One time I was working with this high-profile, successful CEO about succession. Eventually I asked him, ‘What drives you?” Where does the eagerness and the drive come from, what propels you?’

He sat there for a minute and didn’t say anything. For sure, I didn’t say anything. And then he spoke: “When I was very young my parents were told that I was slow. They took the advice of the school administrators and put me into a class with kids who were slow learners. Some of them were mentally handicapped. I was in that class for a couple of years. One day a counselor at the school talked to me and went to the school leadership and my parents and told them “this kid is off the charts smart; why is he in this class? You have made a tremendous mistake.” I was a bit startled and also sad by his revelation. The CEO then leaned forward and said to me with tremendous vigor and a look of pain in his eyes, “I have been trying to get out of that classroom my entire life!”

Somebody trusts you like that; you carry that personal disclosure and identity and some of his sadness to your grave. I say never betray. It’s right, and some days it will save you.

QH: What was the difference between covering an industry from the outside and working within it?

JJK: I spent 20 years banging on boardroom doors trying to find out what was going on behind those doors. Now this new life gave me a chance to see what actually happens in that room. It’s helped me understand business much better and at a deeper level. It made me respect the responsibilities of business people a lot more. I kind of knew that, since I went in to try and get good people who were willing to have those responsibilities. But, it can’t be helped, I’ve also been disappointed sometimes in the way some leaders can be so cavalier with their privileges. I try to smoke that out in my examination of a leadership candidate and through good back-channel referencing so that it doesn’t show up as a problem for a client or those who will depend most on that leader.

QH: You clearly like your work. The thing is, you really loved being a journalist.

JJK: News was a wonderful life. It is constantly swirling somewhere in my head. You and I lost friends in executing their missions and were willing to take that risk. There’s a camaraderie and an excitement in that life, lots to learn and it’s always different. It’s a beautiful mission when it’s done right.

QH: Did that go away?

JJK: I believe you have to find your mission in what you do to keep that burn. Things change when you jump to something completely new. About six months after I left the Journal and started in executive search I got a call out of the blue from a CEO of a company I used to cover. He said, “John, I’ve been thinking about you and I was wondering how you’re doing.” I said, isn’t that nice, thanks for calling. What made you think about me? I was kind of surprised, and he said, “I always respected you and your work when you were a reporter – when we woke up at our company we’d wonder what Keller was going to write that day. Is it going to be a tough one about us? So how do you make that jump? What’s life gonna be like for you? I found it hard myself when I changed careers to really build a name again in my new career. You’re going to find that you have to learn to be John J. Keller all over again.”

He was so right. I had to build a new name for myself in this industry and internally with my colleagues. I think every place you have to figure out how to both be yourself and win over people all over again in a new culture. You have to prove you can do the work well. It can be a pretty big change. At times daunting. It helps when you have supportive management to give you that shot and a culture that is welcoming. I think of how my former bosses at the Journal welcomed me in and gave me the wings to fly and exceed even my own expectations.

I think that’s a good thing for people to understand, whatever they set out to do. Life changes.

Spencer Stuart, the first search firm I went to after the Journal, really cared about the partnership and building a collaborative camaraderie and some important brand-building guardrails into their firm. Their onboarding and initiation of newcomers was the best I had ever experienced. At the weekly partner meetings we talked about what we’re working on, why it was an important assignment, and there’d be lots of collaboration, people jumping in with smart ideas. I had a great mentor there as well who built and ran the firm. After nearly a dozen years at Spencer Stuart, I wanted to experience something new in my industry and moved to several other firms with further personal growth in mind, but a couple felt more transactional, and I didn’t do as well in those cultures. Another firm that I loved pursued me, and I got to contribute on the Exec Committee and help scale a public company that had just IPOd and was a rocket ship. Where I am now, ZRG Partners, is a terrific firm and culture, well run financially and expert at leveraging data for its clients while placing leaders.

QH: Does this industry feel the same as when you started?

JJK: It’s changed a lot. Tech has made it more driven, in some ways more transactional vs the quieter, more exclusive advisory work. There seemed more of a mystique among the top firms years ago. I still laugh at one partner’s story about why he got into the business. He had a chance to interview with a successful senior partner of one search firm and the partner had the would be joiner meet him for lunch at his country club. As he told the story, he waited by the entrance for the partner to show up for the lunch when a silver Aston Martin raced into the parking lot, parked “and out jumped this silver-haired tall slender guy in a tailored suit and he walked up to me and shook my hand hello. I thought: I am doing this!” Hahaha. Funny.

Most of us work at the top of companies so at that level it remains consultative and there is a lot of urgency to keep you focused and driven to deliver. But there has also been more fragmentation within the industry, the rise of LinkedIn, boutiques exploring their niches; many companies have built their own in-house recruiting shops; these days the professionals in our industry are having to be very transactional, where you’re gathering tons of data and doing lots of analytics to ferret out opportunities where search could be a solution and then build a sales pipeline. Being able to return home, feeling the euphoria of getting through what became a tough search; you got it done and placed a great leader who will make good things happen is still a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. Those whose careers you have helped are another high.

There’s still a lot of good in trust, reputations, and relationships. ZRG is doing well because it’s got a great entrepreneur at the top, supportive investors, a great team at all levels driving the mission. Being very data driven helps and clients love it. But it’s only great when you have all the other stuff I mentioned and your people are feeling it. Overall it has been an interesting place to be, with very nice people to work with. I don’t feel like I’m just selling light bulbs or something. But who knows, maybe at some point I’ll feel like being an advisor to a few trusted companies, or perhaps write a book or two about a subject completely unconnected to what I do today. I have some ideas. Keller 3.0?

Note: In late July John left the industry to focus on writing again.