Ezekia at the ECI Group Annual Conference, Windsor
Windsor is a good place to talk about the future of executive search. The backdrop helps.
On Friday, 2 October 2026, Ezekia joined the ECI Group for their annual general meeting in Royal Windsor. Organised by Hanover Fox, a long-standing ECI member firm based in Windsor, the gathering brought together executive search firms from across the network to discuss the issues that matter most right now: how technology is reshaping the industry, how the legal landscape is shifting, and what it means to run a retained search business in a market that is changing faster than most would like.
The ECI Group
The ECI Group is an international network of retained executive search firms. Members span multiple markets and bring together independent boutique firms who share a commitment to high-quality, relationship-led search. The annual gathering is a chance to compare notes, debate the direction of the industry, and hear from people outside the room who are building the tools their businesses depend on.
This year, AI was the through-line for almost every conversation on the agenda.
Ezekia on the Day
Both Max Woolger, VP Revenue, and Duncan Barker, Sales Manager, attended and presented to the group. Between them, they covered the AI landscape from two quite different angles, which turned out to be the right approach.
Max opened with a session grounded in the practical reality of how AI tools are already embedded in most firms, whether those firms realise it or not. His framing was deliberate: the best AI tool you have is probably one you are already paying for. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both have significant AI capabilities built in, and most search firms are sitting on them without fully using them. The sharper question is not which AI tool to buy, but which software becomes more valuable as AI develops and which starts to matter less.
His core argument landed clearly in the room: AI is not killing software. It is changing which software matters. The platforms that will hold their value are the ones that sit at the centre of a firm's data. AI is only as good as what it can read. A CRM that contains years of candidate relationships, mandate history, and market intelligence becomes significantly more powerful as AI develops, not less. A collection of disconnected spreadsheets and email threads does the opposite.
Duncan followed with something more personal. His session, "AI for the Rest of Us," drew on what he had learned by completing seven AI courses as a self-described non-expert, and what those seven classes had actually taught him about what AI means for executive search practitioners day to day.
It was an honest account rather than a polished pitch. The people in the room were not chief technology officers. They were search professionals trying to work out what they needed to understand, what they could safely ignore, and where the real risk of falling behind actually sits. Duncan's perspective as someone who had gone and done the learning himself, rather than simply advising others to, made it land differently.
The Evening
After the sessions wrapped, the group moved on to dinner at The Ivy in Windsor. The conversation that had started in the conference room carried on through the evening, as it tends to when the topic is genuinely live and the people in the room are thinking seriously about it.
It was the kind of evening that reminds you why in-person gatherings matter. The questions that come up over dinner are often the more honest ones.
Why Events Like This Matter for Ezekia
Executive search is a relationship business. The firms that make up the ECI Group are exactly the kind of practices Ezekia is built for: boutique, retained, relationship-led, and increasingly thoughtful about how they use technology to do their work better without losing what makes them good at it.
Getting in front of that community, not to sell but to have a real conversation about where things are heading, is the most valuable kind of conversation we can have. We are grateful to ECI Group and to Hanover Fox for the invitation.
If you were at the conference and want to continue the conversation, or if you work in retained executive search and want to see what Ezekia can do for your firm, get in touch.
Find out more about the ECI Group at eci-group.org and Hanover Fox at hanoverfox.com.
