“Fueling Business Growth Tops CEO Agendas around the World” is the headline announcing the Conference Board’s latest CEO Challenge report. Growth has never entirely been off the CEO radar even during the financial crisis, but now it’s firmly at the top with “talent,” “cost optimization,” and “innovation” in a virtual tie for second place. The interesting quote from the news release was the following about the details of that “talent” challenge.
“CEOs selected the internally-focused actions of improving leadership development/grow talent internally, enhancing the effectiveness of the senior team, providing employee training and development and improving leadership succession as the key strategies to address talent challenges, ahead of hiring more talent in the open market.”
The tough part is that if you’re growing, especially if you’re growing fast, it’s hard to avoid bringing people in from outside and it’s often a struggle to maintain the core of your culture. One company that’s met the challenge is Enterprise, now the largest auto rental company in the world.
Enterprise depends on a management training program that supplements work in their branches with training and education. As the company opens more branches, each one provides another slot for a branch manager, drawn from the ranks of trainees. Each position above that on the org chart is filled from the ranks of those whose journey started as trainees in the branches. Pam Nicholson, the current President came up through that program.
Another model is Walmart. That company has grown consistently for half a century and never brought in a CEO from outside. David Glass (CEO from 1984 to 2000) was hired as Chief Financial Officer in 1976. Lee Scott came on board as assistant director of transportation in 1979 and became CEO in 2000. His successor, Mike Duke brought experience from other retail environments when he was hired in 1995, but had plenty of time to absorb the Walmart way before becoming CEO in 2009.
It’s good to attempt to grow your leadership internally. Enterprise has mostly done that. But it’s also sensible to realize that you may need special skills from outside, as Walmart has done. But in both cases, the very top positions go to people who’ve been thoroughly steeped in the culture.
