Parsing the Hay Group’s Best Companies for Leadership

The Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, released its annual “Best Companies for Leadership” study today. The study will get a lot of press, as it should, mostly about things that don’t really matter to you.

The list is more important than the ranking. I don’t know if it’s possible to come up with a system that would accurately rank the best companies for leadership development in the whole wide world. I do know that the people at Hay have put a lot of thought and experience into this and do about as good a job as possible.

It takes decades in most companies to develop a good leadership development program. Processes need to be developed and refined and so do evaluation and reward systems. Culture needs to shift so that managers see development as a vital part of their job.

That’s why it’s unreasonable to believe that fully eight of this year’s top twenty suddenly leaped to the list from nowhere. In fact, though, the third, fourth, and fifth positions are filled with companies who didn’t make the list at all last year, while 3M has fallen from the third position last year to who-knows-where this year. Don’t count on the rankings to help you.

What you can count on is that every company on the list is doing a lot of things right. Instead of paying attention to fine-grained ranking, take the time to dig into the practices of the companies on this list. Look for things that have been in place long enough to stand the test of time. Look for things that fit your company and culture.

The most important lessons of this report aren’t rankings or quickly-adoptable tricks. The most important lessons are that the companies who are great at leadership development make it a priority and work very, very hard to get it right and make it better.

Wally Bock

Wally Bock is a coach, a writer and President of Three Star Leadership.