In recent years, the need to develop next-generation leaders — people who can translate strategy into results and core values into day-today behaviors — has become the paramount challenge for many chief executives and their top teams. But even though this issue has risen to the top of the agenda, most executives would be the first to admit that they are failing at the effort. And that’s a significant admission, because they would also concur that their leadership “inventory” is woefully insufficient.
In retrospect, the reasons for this shortfall are easy to understand. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, the growing phenomenon of globalization compelled top teams to focus on such priorities as strategic differentiation and the need for sustainable core competencies.1 There was no sense of urgency in this era about developing new leaders, and senior executives all but abdicated ownership of the task to the human resources function, where it was relegated to a second-tier staff responsibility. This path of benign neglect by top management can best be thought of as “the cream will rise to the top” theory of leadership development.
But by the mid-1990s, this approach was clearly inadequate. Unprecedented advances in information technology and jolting demographic changes revealed the scarcity of technical and leadership talent. Seemingly overnight, top teams came to realize that the inability to find leaders... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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