The Naked Headhunter
Search and advisory beneath the surface.
Leadership appointments rarely succeed or fail on competence alone. We read who a candidate becomes when the stakes rise — and what that means for the organisation they are about to lead.
One practice. Two expressions.
SAXSKIOLD is the advisory practice. CURRENT is the thinking that shapes it. The Naked Headhunter is not a third thing to choose — it is the name for how both are done: looking beneath the surface, and saying what is seen.
Nothing is concealed for the sake of authority — not the method, not the doubt, not the reading behind it. Search and thinking are the same work seen from two depths: one above the waterline, one below.
SAXSKIOLD is a member of
Leadership Companion
Work through a real leadership situation.
Work through a real leadership situation with guided reflection and reasoning. Some situations do not need another framework — they need a better reading.
What lies beneath
What they can do is visible.
Who they become under pressure is harder to see.
The Naked Headhunter is an invitation to look deeper. Not to complicate things, but to stop mistaking the weather for the Current. It is a way of working, carried into every SAXSKIOLD engagement and into every page of CURRENT — never a separate service to buy.
Two perspectives
Saxskiold
People, search & advisory
Executive search, leadership assessment, succession and board advisory — the conditions that allow the right people to succeed.
Explore SAXSKIOLD — People, Search & Advisory →Current
The book & the thinking
The book, the CURRENT Companion for reading it, and Study for practising it over time.
Enter CURRENT — Leadership in Motion →What we do
Engagements across search and the practice.Two registers, one discipline. Executive search and recruitment place people into an organisation. The leadership programmes, dialogues and debates work on the conditions those people arrive into.
- 01Executive SearchSaxskiold→
A mandated search for leadership at board, executive and senior level — read against the organisation, not a generic profile.
Explore this engagement → - 02Organisational Value ProgrammeSaxskiold→
A focused examination of where organisational value is created, constrained or lost—across leadership, organisation, technology and execution.
Explore this engagement → - 03Succession & Board AdvisorySaxskiold→
Confidential work with owners, chairs and boards to strengthen leadership continuity over years, not vacancies.
Explore this engagement → - 04Executive DialogueSaxskiold→
A SAXSKIOLD engagement conducted through CURRENT thinking — confidential executive work on a real organisational condition, thinking together before deciding together.
Explore this engagement →
I have worked with Kenneth on recruiting assignments for my management team and other positions. The quality of both the recruitment process and the candidates is very high, helped by Kenneth’s extensive network and strong business insights — which have also proven very valuable in strategic advisory discussions. I recommend Kenneth as a business partner and advisor, and look forward to working with him again.
Nordic executive-search expertise with international reach through more than 30 Taplow offices.
The practitioner
Kenneth Saxskiold-Nørup
Executive search · leadership advisory
“I have spent much of my career watching what happens when capable people meet conditions they were not quite prepared for.”
Former international business executive, board adviser, entrepreneur and executive-search partner. That experience shapes how I approach search today: looking beyond credentials to understand the person, the pressure and the organisation they may be asked to lead.
Meet Kenneth →Connect with Kenneth
One conviction
Better leadership and better hiring begin when we stop performing certainty — and start seeing clearly.
Two doors. One underlying discipline. Whether you arrive through the book or through the search, the work is the same: stay with the situation long enough to sense the organisational current, then shape the next move with that reading in the room.
That discipline is Stay · Sense · Shape. It is not a process diagram. It is a way of paying attention — to people, to pressure, to the gap between intention and effect.
The unseen conditions
Transparency is not a style. It is a method.
Say what is actually being looked for
A brief written honestly is already half the appointment. Most searches fail because the organisation described the role it wished to have rather than the one it needs filled.
Show the reasoning, not only the shortlist
Judgement that cannot be examined cannot be trusted. Every recommendation carries its argument with it, including the parts that argue against it.
Read the Current, not the weather
Behaviour on the surface is rarely the cause. The patterns that produce it sit below everyday behaviour, and only appear to those willing to stay with them.
Welcome beneath the surface.
Start where your question is.
If the question is less about a role and more about what a situation is making possible, begin with Orientation — three perspectives on the same field.