Here’s an example of a leadership development plan that didn’t go quite to plan.
A little over a year ago a consumer food company came to us with a big problem. Despite doing “all the right things,” they never seemed to have enough leaders in their pipeline to fill critical roles. This became painfully clear after a group of senior leaders retired, and then again after a major expansion.
The company had a robust succession planning process—on paper. They had historically done a lot of leadership training, but it was generic, one-size-fits-all type stuff. People had access to workshops, senior bosses had access to leadership coaches, and the company had an online learning platform subscription that anybody could access at any time.
The issue wasn’t that future leadership wasn’t consuming enough leadership content. It was that despite all the company’s efforts and investments, the managers’ leadership skills and capabilities weren’t growing.
93% of Senior Managers Think Their Companies Are Building Leaders the Wrong Way
Here’s one reason why that may be.
When the company contacted us they were on the cusp of another major growth surge. Their strategy was three-pronged: entering new food categories, entering new countries, and doubling down on current offerings that were advantaged. But they were frustrated and worried they wouldn’t be able to handle this upcoming capacity spike because their long-term leadership bench was so shallow.
They needed three types of leaders:
- general managers who could run P&Ls of categories or countries and actually build a team out and run a business
- functional leaders with more than just functional expertise, but with enough enterprise perspective that allowed them to be successful in growing talent
- first-line supervisors who could help develop rank-and-file team members as they rose from the bottom and prepare them to take on broader levels of responsibility
If they could find these people, it would ensure the company could scale without having to always add headcount. It would also mean that when new employees did arrive, they would catch on more quickly under the tutelage of confident, experienced, talent-building managers. There’d be less time wasting and better time management.
Warren Bennis
Growing other leaders from the ranks isn’t just the duty of the leader, it’s an obligation.
Take Your Leaders to School
As part of the intake process we spent weeks looking under the hood. We talked to stakeholders at every level, as well as customers. We went up, down, and around the chain.
Having collected our intel, we recommended a set of strategies customized to each type of leader mentioned above. For brevity’s sake, though, we focus below just on our leadership development program template for the general managers—the most pressing position.
This involved building what we call “GM University”: a cohort of eighteen executives who either had just been appointed to P&L roles or were in the pipeline to assume one within the next year or two. Others might call it a leadership improvement plan.
We began executive consulting classes by assessing each one to understand what their strengths and gaps were. Truth be told, there were plenty of the latter. The GMs knew very little about the countries or product categories they had been assigned or were soon going to be assigned. Many were very naive about what it took to run a business, and even how the company made money. What were the bestselling products, in what territories, and why? They couldn’t say. As you might expect, this was a problem!
The saving grace was that they had a lot of enthusiasm for learning and were open to our interventions.
The Right Leadership Development Objectives Matter
It was clear that we’d have to start with the basics. So we taught (or re-taught) them how to assess the current state of their businesses: the competitive landscape; the company’s strengths, capabilities, differentiators, and liabilities; and product, talent, and service assessment.
For example, one business unit competed through fast-cycle innovation that had them turning solutions around very quickly. This was the capability that set them apart from their competitors. One of the executives, however, didn’t realize this until we helped them dissect their P&L. (This may seem unbelievable to some, but I guarantee this situation is far more common than people acknowledge.)
What Good Are Development Goals for Leaders if You Can’t Measure Progress?
Next, we created a diagnostic device that allowed each member of the cohort to personally go out and audit their businesses. Apart from familiarizing themselves much more intimately with their business unit and the employees in it, it helped them grasp the strengths and vulnerabilities of the business, and, by extension, how they should prioritize their time. It was an easy, effective way to gain a broader business perspective.
The next step was to get them feedback on their leadership, which they’d then use to create a personalized leadership development plan. Each GM had their own coach to walk them through the data and help them build their plan, and, by extension, their career vision. Once these were crafted we divided the cohort into teams of four and asked the GMs to do peer coaching.
We explained that if these executive coaching sessions were going to work each manager would have to be vulnerable. The sessions required them to share the data from their business audits as well as their leadership feedback—the good, the bad, and the very bad. They would have to swallow their egos and be active listeners as their peers weighed in.
Tip
Offering and listening to honest feedback can be stressful, so when it comes time to do this try to keep the setting low-key and (relatively) informal. A discussion over lunch or coffee on a Friday is better than a formal meeting first thing Monday morning.
Build Relationships, Build Strong Future Leaders
Apart from providing actionable and enlightening feedback, the meetings served to strengthen the GMs’ relationships. It helped them recognize that together, they all made up the P&L of the enterprise. And together they could and should, work toward performing better as a collective rather than seeing each other as rivals or competitors, which had been the historical perspective at the organization.
For too long managers had regarded each other as a bunch of little fiefdoms that each did their thing autonomously, with little accountability to other units.
Over the following year, the cohort met once a month as a full cohort and twice a month in their four-person learning teams. Additionally, each GM met with their coach twice a month on alternating weeks and with their boss every two months (each GM reported to one of two COOs).
During these meetings, they gave the COO an update on their progress, their plans, what they were learning, and their career goals; in exchange, they were given personalized coaching advice and the opportunity to stay connected to their boss, who functioned much like a sponsor.
… And See Your Developed Leadership Goals and Action Plan Pay Off
By the end of the year each business unit had shown substantial improvement in at least one aspect of performance (e.g., revenue growth, market share, profitability). And when we conducted a check-in survey using feedback from their employees and their COO sponsor, we learned that every GM had demonstrated progress in at least one aspect of their leadership that had been flagged as needing improvement in the initial feedback audit.
It’s only been a year, but three of the GMs-in-waiting will be appointed to GM roles within the next six months and feel ready and prepared to do so. The organization’s collective performance, as measured through the company’s collective P&L, grew substantially over this time period as well. Some of this growth was no doubt due to the market, but the leadership development program has also been a key driver, according to the CEO.
Leadership Development Plan Samples, Now That’s a Bad Idea
Form Follows Function (Or at Least It Should)
The key takeaway here is that when it comes to goals of leadership training, one size definitely doesn’t fit all; it may not even fit more than a few. When we started working with this company, we began by identifying their performance gaps and what was needed to fill them. We didn’t try and treat them the same as every other organization or client.
Too many leaders, even those who mean well, come in with the same faulty leadership development plan template: “This is my shtick. These are my bells and whistles that I like, so we’re going to fit those into your thing. The customization is when I bring a unique case study in or twist something to make it sound like it fits you.” Sad to say, this isn’t a development plan for cultivating real leadership skills.
All the leadership content we brought in the room was based exclusively on the feedback data the GMs got. We custom developed content and prioritized it based on the areas they said they wanted to invest in and learn about. There was no eight-step program.
Leaders must accommodate the leadership development goals; the goals shouldn’t have to accommodate the leaders.
The other, more general takeaway here is that raw talent isn’t enough. If there’s a knowledge or performance gap when it comes to leadership positions, whether with a key employee or an organization at large, it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. There’s simply no way around this. Without knowing the basics you won’t perform well, much less scale successfully.