QUARTERLY LETTER: SEPTEMBER, 2026
In June I wrote about decision paralysis. Capable leaders with a clear vision, holding back from committing to this vision while they waited for conditions to settle. Over the past three months, many of them have stopped waiting. Gold and copper growth projects are advancing, technology investment is continuing, and contractors are more confident in their pipelines.
The volatility has not eased. Commodity prices, geopolitics and a technology cycle that keeps rewriting operating models are still on every agenda. What has changed is the conversation around the agenda. Leaders have committed to a direction and accept that the route will continually need adjusting. The questions they bring me now are how to sustain what they have started, and how to bring their people with them.
Commit, then adapt. That is the thread of this quarterly letter, and underneath it, almost everywhere I looked, was trust.
Natural resources
Gold and copper are driving growth projects. Some are greenfield, but most are brownfield. Clients still want proven leaders with experience and deep knowledge. When we talk about what separates one candidate from another, though, the answer is almost always what we once called ‘softer skills’ and are now some of the most important skills within a leader’s toolkit: leading teams through change, building culture, and pursuing an ambitious goal.
Today, leaders are expected to adopt new technology with proper change management, engage external stakeholders, and manage supply chain partnerships and alliances. Operational excellence and cost competitiveness still matter, because they protect a business when commodity prices swing. Boards are also treating leadership depth as resilience, with succession and bench strength a clear focus.
Collaboration is where the trust question is hardest. On 3 September the Australian Financial Review’s Tom Rabe and Mark Wembridge reported that the WA government is pressing the major Pilbara miners to put aside ‘decades-long competitive hostilities’ and develop common user infrastructure, which includes ‘hundreds of kilometres of new transmission lines’. Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King told the AFR: ‘I wish they did work together better, but you know they’re competitors, too.’ It is a test of leadership as much as of engineering.
Industrial technology
Investment continues, with more rigour. Business cases have to be stronger, execution has to be safe, and the focus is on solutions that are fit for purpose.
Commercial leadership is in demand: people with industry knowledge, trusted relationships with end users, and the skill to bring a varied group of client stakeholders through a sales cycle that is maturing. At enterprise level, a fast-moving, AI-driven environment calls for visionary leaders who can keep structure, culture and product roadmap flexible. Staying relevant to end users is relentless work, and so is finding investment partners committed to medium and longer-term returns.
Contracting services
Engineering and project delivery contractors are gaining confidence in their pipelines, but slow decisions by end clients limit how far they can invest in leadership beyond the short term.
The contractors who invest now in culture, capability and delivery readiness will be best placed to capture the market as projects advance. The brief from our services clients is consistent: strategic thinkers who commit to a vision but adapt to client and market needs, with the people skills to build empowered, resilient teams.
The candidate market
Attracting top performers is much more difficult. Candidates are more sophisticated and more particular. They want to know whether they share the organisation’s vision, whether they can trust its leadership, whether the culture fits, whether there is a real path for development, and whether they will be part of strategic decisions.
Retention is a real barrier as well, especially in commodity sectors, where long-term incentive values have grown significantly. The clients getting results take more time, flex their process and build genuine relationships with candidates. They also plan earlier. Succession conversations that start sooner, with longer lead times, lead to better appointments.
What separates one leader from another?
Across all of these conversations, technical capability is assumed. Human capability is what separates one leader from another, and trust sits under most of what I have described: candidates weighing whether they trust a leadership team, clients trusting a process enough to give it time, competitors being asked to trust each other enough to share infrastructure.
Ambition also has to be matched by execution discipline. The organisations doing well are thinking long term, and they are building the trust that keeps a team moving when the plan changes.
How executive search is changing
Uncertainty is now the constant, and search has to evolve alongside what clients need. Clients are asking us to consider ‘Fit over Best’, and for appointments that stick and perform.
A Financial Times feature by Andrew Hill, ‘How to find a leader in 2026’ (13 September), describes the same idea. One search chief executive told the FT that clients are ‘not simply asking “who’s the best?” They’re asking “who’s the best for this company, this team?”‘ The FT reports that boards ‘increasingly demand evidence of “softer” skills’, and highlights demand for ‘catalyst CEOs’ who build teams rather than act as ‘dominant commanders’. Another chief executive told the FT that the ability to keep learning is today’s ‘number one predictor’ of leadership success. The FT also reports that the largest firms are adding simulations and scenario tests powered by AI to their assessment.
Technology can sharpen judgement but cannot replace it. The FT’s interviewees agree that search will remain a ‘human business’, and so do we.
Our journey through FY27
At Goldrick, we are balancing investment in the practice with exceptional delivery for clients, so we have simplified our priorities to two.
The first is purpose and culture: our sense of purpose, our passion for the work, and the strengthening of our values.
The second is mastery in assignment delivery: best practice, building our research capability, and growing our client and candidate relationships with intent.
Part of that work is growing our research capability, and we are looking for a Researcher to join our team. If you know someone who would be right for it, I would be glad to hear from you.
Holding two priorities is a deliberate choice we’ve made. It is how we are applying to ourselves what I see in the best leaders around us. The clarity on what matters most, and a commitment to doing it well.
Momentum built on the same kind of trust you place in us, and the conversations that help shape these quarterly letters.
Warm regards,
Alex Goldrick
Managing Director
Goldrick Consulting
