“Tracking the talent, finding the leaders” is an interview with Robert P. Gandossy, who’s described as “the founder of the annual Top Companies For Leaders’ study.” If talent development is part of your portfolio, you’ll want to read the article for a hodgepodge of observations on leadership development. One part of the piece really caught my attention.
“And it’s not so easy to just go and buy talent, Gandossy says. It’s not readily there, and it’s preferable to put a succession plan in place. ‘You want people in your leadership pipeline in case there is a succession decision. It’s far less costly and disruptive if you can do that.”
For years, marketers have known that you get a lot more profitable business from your existing customers than you do from new customers. So smart marketers have developed programs to reach and develop those existing customers. Talent development people can take a lesson from the marketers.
HP is the poster child for how not to do leadership development and succession planning. Since Lew Platt, who left HP a dozen years ago, the company has brought in four outsiders to be the permanent CEO. One such permanent CEO lasted less than a year.
It makes sense to go to an outsider when you need a turnaround, but ideally that both brings change and buys you time to develop insiders. That’s what happened at IBM.
That company brought in an outsider, Lou Gerstner in 1993 to shake things up and turn the company’s fortunes around. He was on the job for close to a decade and when he left the company chose Sam Palmisano as CEO. Palmisano was with IBM for almost thirty years at the time. IBM has just announced that their next CEO will be Ginni Rometty, another thirty year veteran of the company.
Consider the advantages that Ms Rometty has over any hired-from-outside CEO. She knows the company and has worked in several parts of it. She knows the people and the people know her. And she knows the culture, so she can make changes with the cultural grain when she has to.
The bottom line here is pretty straightforward. If you’ve got talented people in house (and you do), most of the time everyone benefits when you devote more attention to development and less to finding an outsider to perform miracles.
2 Trackbacks
[…] Wally’s Comment: This interview with Robert P. Gandossy, described as “the founder of the annual Top Companies For Leaders’ study” covers a lot of ground. One part inspired my post: “Develop or Buy.” […]
[…] Develop or Buy “Tracking the talent, finding the leaders” is an interview with Robert P. Gandossy, who’s described as “the founder of the annual Top Companies For Leaders’ study.” If talent development is part of your portfolio, you’ll want to read the article for a hodgepodge of observations on leadership development. One part of the piece really caught my attention. […]