also clarified the roles of senior executives of the companies and the bosses of future leaders in delivering on development goals.
Pat has published work on the topics of future-leader development and the use of culture assessments to accelerate the integration of acquisitions. She continues to consult with select companies in the areas of CEO succession; senior executive development; the design of large-scale, global future-leader development programs; and merger integration.
Prior to joining RHR International, Pat practiced as a clinical geropsychologist at Harvard University, the Veterans Administration, and the St. Louis Behavioral Medicine Institute. Before becoming a licensed psychologist, she was a corporate attorney and an assistant professor of law at St. Louis University Law School. In her legal practice, she specialized in the areas of employment and environmental law. She is a former chair of the Missouri Bar Environmental Law Section, where she led the effort to improve the process of conducting environmental audits during due diligence.
Pat received her law degree from the University of Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Northwestern University.
Introduction
Robert B. Kaiser
Kaplan DeVries Inc.
The task at the top of the human resources/organizational development and effectiveness (HR/OD&E) short list these days is ensuring a deep supply of leadership talent that is ready to step into more senior roles when called upon. There are lots of reasons why. Chief among them is that competition is fiercer today than ever before and effective leadership represents a rare source of competitive advantage. With strong leadership and a richly stocked pool of future leaders, organizations prosper and endure.
But the flow in the leadership pipeline has slowed to a trickle. The mass exodus of middle managers initiated in the 1980s by downsizing means that now there are fewer seasoned veterans available for top jobs. Most organization charts and succession maps are noteworthy for the number of blank slots five years out. And the graying and impending retirement of baby boomers coupled with steep and steady declines in skilled entrants to the workforce adds up to an even greater shortage of talent in the U.S. labor market of the early twenty-first century. This could make the “War for Talent” of the late 1990s look more like a street fight.
The Business Case
There is an easy case to make for the imperative of investing in tomorrow’s leaders today. It’s the law of supply and demand: more organizations in greater competition under increased pressure to perform put a premium on scarce talent. The labor economy has become a seller’s market, and poaching or luring talent away from other organizations is a losing proposition. The alternative is to become good at developing your talented managers into great leaders and aggressively seeking out potential and developing it anywhere and everywhere you can find it across the organization.
This defines an agenda for HR/OD&E and talent managers: creating integrated systems for churning out homegrown leaders. It’s not enough to help individuals be effective in their current positions. We need talented managers ready to step into jobs of greater responsibility and hit the ground running. This is the challenge weighing on the talent profession today. With an urgent and daunting mandate, best-in-class talent managers have been courageously experimenting, curiously benchmarking, and feverishly seeking solutions.
The purpose of this volume is to share what has been learned in the last few years of increased attention to the systematic and strategic cultivation of leadership talent. The time is ripe for leading practitioners to share key lessons about building and filling a leadership pipeline.
The Audience for This Book
This collection of chapters was written expressly for those responsible for building leadership bench strength. The authors, all from internationally renowned consultancies and educational institutes, were asked to speak directly to senior human resources executives, organizational development and effectiveness directors, and consultants and trainers. The goal was to pass on lessons from experience. Each chapter is packed with practical advice and suggestions. At the same time, it is rigorously backed by scientific research, tested theory, and firsthand examples from Fortune 500 companies and major government organizations like the Central Intelligence Agency.
What follows, I think you will agree, is a collection of road-tested frameworks, strategies, and tactics that are useful in building your leadership pipeline. My reading of the five chapters suggests that each holds out the promise of at least one new “big idea” and a handful of specific action steps that flow naturally from it.
Structure and Content
This volume is divided into three parts, each corresponding to a particular perspective or set of considerations about building a leadership pipeline. These three perspectives are represented in figure 1. The basic idea is that there is a larger business environment shaping trends and offering examples to learn from. Within that larger context are your own particular organization and unique circumstances. On the one hand, you can consider your company’s pool of talent, who these managers are as individuals, and what they need to realize their potential. On the other hand, you can look at the pipeline question from the perspective of development systems—the mechanics of talent development including processes, content, and tools for growing leaders. And there should be overlap between the individual and systems perspectives—effective talent development strategies are designed with both firmly in mind.
Rather than provide exhaustive coverage of each of the major considerations in figure 1, the focus of this volume is to provide targeted points of view relevant to each. The collection of chapters is also integrated; rather than submitting disparate papers to lump together, the authors have carefully considered their contributions in light of what the other authors have to say. Based on the synergy and interconnectedness of the chapters, it seems evident that the authors found much to learn from each other.
Figure 1. Key Considerations in Building a Leadership Pipeline
Part 1: Business Environment
The first part frames the larger context of preparing for the leadership needs of the future with a chapter by Pat Weik of RHR International Company. Weik reports on a benchmarking survey summarizing current practices across 115 companies (most with greater than $1 billion in U.S. revenue) of preparing now for the future leadership of their enterprises. A key finding: filling the pipe is a new priority—most companies report ramping up the identification and focused development of high potentials only in the last three years. Weik also reports on the skills most sought after in high potentials, the roles senior leaders are playing, and key techniques facilitating accelerating development. Weik takes on the issue of impact: how are companies tracking investments in filling the pipe, assessing progress, and estimating ROI? Most are struggling with this. But there is hope: some companies are figuring it out.
Part 2: Considerations about Individual Managers
The next part includes two chapters that focus primarily on the needs of individual managers and leaders. First, Arthur Freedman of American University, National Training Labs Institute, and Quantum Associates describes a refined version of his “pathways-and-crossroads” model of how managers go from being frontline supervisors to CEOs. He considers
