The most successful organizations know that developing talent is the key to continual success. Each year Fortune ranks the organizations that do it best, and for the past few years IBM has has consistently been identified as a global leader in Leadership Development. This article will look in depth at the keys to developing leaders, and outline how your organization can create leaders like IBM.
So what sets great leadership programs apart?
- Business skill needs and matched competencies
- Substantial data on potential leaders
- Exclusive selection process for top developmental programs
- Strong developmental program
Competencies matched to Business Needs
In 2002 IBM’s new CEO Sam Palmisano unveiled a plan to transform IBM. In a hyperconnected world, IBM’s clients needed to become “on-demand” companies, their every business process exquisitely calibrated to respond instantly to whatever got thrown at them. To help them, IBM would have to do exactly the same thing. When she heard about the new strategy, Donna Riley, IBM’s vice president of global talent, remembers wondering whether the company had the right managers for its new direction. “If leadership is stuck in the past, and the business has changed, we have a problem.”- Fast Company
So, with the help of a global consulting firm, IBM identified 11 competencies that their leaders needed to possess to effectively implement this strategy. An important message to HR professionals is being able to ask the CEO a tough question – does she really think they have the organizational talent required to carry out the new strategy? Below are two leadership competency frameworks from successful companies:
| IBM (source) |
CISCO (source) |
Innovation that matters — for our company and for the world
Dedication to every client’s success
Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships
|
C-LEAD defines what Cisco expects from
its leaders and what they should expect from each other. It has five
interdependent themes: Collaborate, Learn, Execute, Accelerate, and
Disrupt. Each theme encompasses leadership expectations or competencies
that together constitute the skill set of an effective leader.
|
Both organizations spent a significant amount of time, and money, identifying the competencies required of their leaders to support their strategic direction. This is a great example of how human resources can be part of the strategic process.
In addition, a great example of collaboration is IBM’s “Global Innovation Jams” found here. It shows the willingness of IBM’s leadership to demonstrate the competencies that make their organization successful.
Substantial data on potential leaders
IBM has significant profiles on 60,000 employees who are either
currently leadership, or considered high potential candidates for
leadership. Of a
400,000 employee global workforce that is a significant undertaking, and
demonstrates the value of leadership to the organization. IBM is
not alone in this regard, other organizations well known for leadership
development utilize the same practice – including GE and P&G.
These databases provide a great resource for comparing leaders, tracking their development, and understanding when they will be available. As well, they can also help identify blockages in the leadership pipeline, as occurred at (I believe) Bank of America. BoA was able to identify an upcoming CEO candidate, and to ensure the future leader didn’t leave their organization, made the difficult decision to terminate a well performing C-level executive in order to open a position for this employee. That identified leader did in fact end up taking over the CEO position at BoA.
To make the difficult decision BoA did, they needed to have comfort with the evidence. Start building a strong framework for tracking employee competencies and development over time is essential for ensuring the long-term success of your leadership development. Consider both technical skills, competencies, and business results over time.
Exclusive selection process for top developmental programs
For John Tolva, IBM’s Chicago-based director of citizenship and technology, the value of his four-week assignment to Ghana last year really hit him during a game of Scrabble by candlelight. He and teammates from India, Germany, Brazil, and other countries had agreed on an unorthodox rule: You could use any language you knew.
“That’s when I understood what a globally integrated enterprise looks like,” he says. He and the others were forced to ask “what connects us,” since it obviously wasn’t language or culture. The real connection, I Tolva says, is “the values that IBM has instilled in us. It’s a professional code that isn’t written down—but it’s there.” (Fortune, 2009)
Developmental assignments like this are among the most important tools that great companies use to build leaders, and that average companies rarely use at all. But this level of opportunity comes at a cost. IBM’s program is more difficult than Harvard to get into. Therein lies some of the allure, recently Strategy+Business highlighted the value of “elite magnetism” for recruitment and retention of high performers.
Not only do the high potential employees receive an opportunity to develop their skills and improve their network, opportunities like this also increase their engagement and connection to the organization. In addition, the rigorous training, and performance requirements to this point help ensure only the best candidates undertake these costly, but effect, opportunities.
Even if your organization isn’t a global enterprise, you can still create developmental opportunities with job rotations, secondments, and partnerships with non-profit organizations.
Where the average company might offer several hundred employees an international opportunity for two or three years, IBM gives “mobility assignments” to thousands for three to six months. “It’s an investment,” says Ted Hoff, vice president with the company’s Center for Learning and Development. “We want all IBM leaders to have cross-geographic experience.” (Fortune)
While this is in a way part of the developmental program for your leaders, it is important enough in the modern global economy to warrant it’s own section. Developing global relationships and skills are essential to any top leader.
Strong developmental program
Lastly, is the most common part of most leadership programs, the
formal training and support offered to managers through
executives. The best way of organizing this was by EPCOR, who won
an award for their leadership program. EPCOR used a basic approach
to organizing their skills:
- Management Skills: Immediately upon attaining supervising authority. This covers conflict management, performance management, financial intelligence, delegation, basic emotional intelligence training, and a number of other skills required by front line managers in their day to day work. These modules are generally a combination of traditional classroom training, exercises, and case studies. Often facilitated by human resources.
- Leadership Behaviours: This is for managers of managers. It begins to align leadership behaviours with the competencies. In particular this area includes a continuous improvement project that must be completed to graduate the course. This course is a combination of case studies, self-evaluation/monitoring, and project work. Often with a senior executive as either a co-facilitator or as an advisor for the continuous improvement project. This improves the visibility of the potential leaders, as well as gets them accustomed to working with executives, and as a team across boundaries. Financial investment and publication company The Motley Fool has modules taught by the various C-suite executives during a similar phase of training within their organization.
- Strategic Leadership: The final phase is best done in small grounds, and as open discussions between current executives and future executives focusing on Strategy Development, and Strategy Execution (this part being where many organizations fall off). Executives need an understanding of how the organization creates value, and how they can create business models for their areas of the organization, as well as what is strategy. They also need to understand how to execute on strategy – how to transform it from strategy to business performance. This involves the various processes already in place in most organizations (360 feedback, performance management, KPI’s and annual operational plans), as well as how to eliminate bottlenecks in processes (often around unclear responsibilities and accountability). Reviewing current business areas, and issues are essential. In one organization these teams would develop solutions using this skills to current business problems, and present them to the C-suite. After input, they would then go and implement these projects within the organization, developing the experience necessary to be effective executives.
So, there you have it – the formula for creating great leaders. This is by no means comprehensive, so let me know how your organization is creating the next generation of leaders.
“The views here do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of PwC.”