At some regular interval, your organization reviews and refreshes its strategic plan. Now that we are well past the end of Q2, how much have you thought about a key factor that will help you execute your strategy: your organization’s leadership pipeline? Do you have that nagging question in the back of your mind that you may not have the leadership needed to achieve the long-term strategy? Do you have a structure and process in place to develop the leaders you’ll need? Current leadership development processes and programs in your organization may be doing a good job of developing today’s leaders, but what about tomorrow’s?
Even though strategic plans are no longer set in stone, organizations should review them at regular time frames depending upon the type of business it is and how volatile the market is. During the review, organizations should evaluate whether they have the leaders with the skill sets that will be needed in the future. Can your current leadership across the organization take it to the next level of performance, with an understanding of the future requirements related to organizational culture, evolving workforce, technology evolution, compliance issues, and the performance changes dictated by stiffer and stiffer global competition? Maybe not?
The leadership competencies and skills required three, five, ten years from now may be very different from those of today. Building your leadership pipeline goes beyond a succession plan. It is a well-planned-out, company-specific structure for developing leaders by moving them across and up the organization so that they are well groomed to understand the entire business and suit the organization’s future needs. It also includes training or development plans that build understanding of future, projected global trends and best practices related to technologies, organizational culture, structure, processes, leadership, and organizational performance.
Start by asking the right questions: What functional areas will future leaders need to understand in order to lead the organization, and how can you develop leaders through those functions? How well do your leaders understand innovation and the culture required to achieve it? Are your current and future leaders being developed related to the best-practice areas listed above? Do you have the pipeline structured and budgeted? Many organizations have refined leader training, education, and hiring practices, but not through the lens of the different competencies and skills required in the future, high-performance organization.
Why is leadership pipeline important? What happens if you don’t have one? These questions can be answered from many organizations’ negative past experiences.
1. Without a leadership pipeline, the organization will struggle to execute its strategy.
2. A failure to correctly identify and develop your most talented leaders causes them to leave the organization prematurely, and you may be losing the very leaders you need to keep. (Most organizations make mistakes in identifying their “fast-track” high potential employees, selecting employees who don’t rock the boat, or who know how to play the political game in the organization, rather than those with leadership “mettle.”) Losing talented employees causes a brain drain that is very damaging to the organization.
3. Without a leadership pipeline, the organization is destined to seek leaders from outside the organization – leaders who may be missing vital institutional knowledge.
This is the perfect time to go beyond the strategic plan to take the necessary steps for evaluating and improving your leadership pipeline so that you can achieve your strategy.
If you’d like a discussion about assessing or improving your leadership pipeline, we can help. For a complimentary 60-minute strategy session to help your organization align leadership development with strategy, please contact me or message me in LinkedIn.