The CEO of a major high tech company told me last week that the recession is definitely history for executive talent. He complained that he now has a serious problem with smaller competitors poaching his best managers. And he has had to boost compensation substantially to retain critical leaders.
The market for top talent is only going to get hotter. One leading executive recruiter told me not long ago that she has leaders coming to her saying, “We’re looking at all our C-suite positions. We need to know what’s out there because we’re absolutely naked right now.”
Leadership pipelines in many organizations today are dangerously thin. Thus, one of the most consistent challenges reported by CEOs we interviewed for our new book The Executive Guide to High-Impact Talent Management is the need to accelerate leadership development. Here are two things we found smart companies are doing to maximize their investments in creating a new generation of leaders.
Identify The Most Critical Roles You Have To Fill
Do you have a process that identifies the organization’s most essential jobs so you can fast-track candidates for them? A committee of top managers oversees the leadership development program at the Franciscan Health System, which includes five full-service hospitals in Washington state. This committee works directly with the system’s strategic plan when choosing candidates for its leadership development pool.
Who will run the new outpatient center in two years? What leadership roles must be filled to grow the oncology service line in the years ahead? Top management at Franciscan works from its strategic plan to make sure that talent investments are continually focused where they are most needed to drive the business.
Get Fast Feedback on Performance
Are you continually evaluating how well your approaches to leadership development are paying off? What changes need to be made? To maximize learning and to quickly identify those who won’t make it, smart executives find ways to shorten the feedback loop on how high potential young leaders are performing. The COO of a UK-based global products company, for example, needed to know how his new country general managers were doing. So he had his chief talent officer create a tool that tracked the progress of new GMs at three-month intervals. The COO is now able to monitor observable performance criteria to compare the progress of 15 new GMs across regions. This gives him important feedback on who needs more coaching and who might not make it in their new position.
Is your organization like the high tech firm whose CEO is worried about losing key talent? Are you doing enough to accelerate the development of young leaders so you’ll have replacements ready to fill in for those surprise departures?