Veteran executive recruiter Karl Alleman, managing partner of Egon Zehnder’s U.S. practice, has a particularly good vantage point on this.

Egon Zehnder Chairman Damien O’Brien spoke to Forbes India’s Manu Balachandran about the evolution of company boards and identifying new leaders.

Professional service firms are very different from other commercial enterprises. They typically lack the hard-nosed bottom line focus and hierarchical management structure of most companies.

Companies with global aspirations require boards with global capability. So why don’t their boards reflect this new strategic direction? The findings of the 2014 Egon Zehnder Global Board Index™ reveal a Global Capability Gap, named by Egon Zehnder to describe the disparity between a company’s global footprint and the global experience of board members.

As private equity firms look to maximize value from their investments, it is critical to ensure that portfolio company management teams have the right capabilities to execute against their investment theses. Though in many cases the underlying premise will lie in backing an existing management team, it is increasingly common for private equity firms to bring in a new CFO early in the lifespan of an investment.

After you’ve been fired, getting back into the job market can be difficult. Egon Zehnder Senior Advisor Claudio Fernández-Aráoz offered his expertise on how best to approach this situation in Harvard Business Review.

The European commission is to push for a quota for women on company boards to address the slow progress to gender equality in the senior ranks of publicly listed businesses. Previous attempts by the EU’s executive to set a 40% goal for women in the top ranks of listed companies have been blocked by Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden overs fears that Brussels was overreaching into domestic affairs. Hungary and Poland have opposed the move on ideological grounds.

How can firms and female managers accelerate slow progress with gender diversity? In an interview with the Handelszeitung Egon Zehnder consultant Simone Stebler advises female professionals to find a sponsor.

Corporate leadership development programs aren’t working. Less than a quarter of executives at the organizations that have them think they’re effective. Evaluations of managers at thousands of corporations suggest that 72% have what it takes to grow into C-suite roles. How can we bridge the gap between this raw talent and executive success?

In 2013, Carol SingletonSlade, Steve Goodman, Trent Aulbaugh and Roger Aguirre of Egon Zehnder’s Global Energy Practice warned of the dire need for identifying and training a new generation of qualified and prepared executives who are ready and willing to lead oil and gas companies. Four years later, as Chevron’s chief executive John Watson is set to step down, his likely replacement is a representation of this “new leadership for a changing oil world.”