Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find the very best talent development posts. This week, you’ll find pointers to pieces about the complex nature of CEO succession, promoting the unprepared, what’s next for management, and thinking about the future of HR.
From the Business Spectator: A new broom – moving on icon CEOs
“CEO succession can be notoriously difficult. But a high-profile CEO – intimately linked with the business – significantly ramps up the risks and challenges of transition to a new leader. “Founder/icon CEO succession is the most complex and fraught, and has the most risk,†said Stephen A Miles, a specialist in CEO successions and the Atlanta-based vice chairman of global executive search firm, Heidrick & Struggles.”
Wally’s Comment: CEO succession is never easy, but it’s even tougher when the CEO is an “icon” and also needs to go.
From HR Morning: New managers: Are you sure they’re up to the job?
“Almost six in 10 employees think their supervisor’s doing a good job. Not a bad number, considering that a bunch of those managers say they weren’t prepared for the responsibility in the first place. “
Wally’s Comment: This story reports on a CareerBuilder survey where a quarter of new managers said they weren’t ready for the job when they got promoted.
From J. Keith Dunbar: The End of Management…Long Live Management!
“That was the title of a very enlightening article from the Wall Street Journal on what management has been, where management is, and more importantly…where management will evolve to in the future. The article titles “The End of Management” details the world we find ourselves in now. Corporations and managers created value and organized resources around the most important activities. In many ways, management thoughts and practices served their purpose greatly to drive organizations to achieve. Then this little thing called the Internet occurred and concepts of management started to change immediately. Now management is not a top-down driven activity, but a multi-directional ability to change organizations and enable tapping into the strengths and dreams of the entire organization to achieve new goals”
Wally’s Comment: Since Gary Hamel suggested that management should be reinvented, pundits of all kinds have weighed in with their ideas about what the new version should be. Keith Dunbar takes that a step farther by considering what talent development people should be doing right now to prepare for the future. How do we develop talent for a new kind of management?
From Mike Haberman: What Are You Doing Today That Will Be Worthless Tomorrow?
“We have all read about the rapidity of change, probably ad nauseum by now. But I read a post today that quoted a Manpower study that said something to the effect that even though jobs are starting to come back they will not be the same jobs that workers left. Different skill sets will be needed. This then led me to ask the following questions.”
Wally’s Comment: This is a good companion to Keith Dunbar’s post. Mike Haberman says you should be thinking (at least a little bit) about what things that we do today that simply won’t be needed in the future. Take a few moments to ponder this. Then ponder it again. And again. You’ll get different answers each time, but that’s OK, this is more about the thinking than it is about the specific answers you come up with.
