BMA eBook - Manual / Resource - Page 263
What to Ask the Person in the Mirror
If you aren’t identifying
potential successors, you
are probably not
delegating as extensively
as you should.
in his organization. He felt that he could not
use his time to the fullest because he viewed
his direct reports as incapable of assuming
some of his major responsibilities. He believed
this talent deficit was keeping him from
launching several new product and market initiatives. In the midst of all this, he lost two essential subordinates over six months—each
had left to take on increased responsibilities at
major competitors. He had tried to persuade
them to stay, emphasizing that he was actively
considering them for significant new leadership assignments. Because they had not seen
evidence of this previously, they were skeptical
and left anyway. I asked him whether, prior to
the defections, he had identified them (or anyone else) as potential successors, put increased
responsibilities in their hands, or actively ratcheted up his coaching of these professionals. He
answered that, in the chaos of daily events and
in the effort to keep up with the business, he
had not done so. He also admitted that he had
underestimated the potential of these two employees and realized he was probably underestimating the abilities of several others in the
company. He immediately sat down and made
a list of potential stars and next to each name
wrote out a career and responsibility game plan.
He immediately got to work on this formative
succession plan, although he suspected that he
had probably waited too long already.
When you’re challenging and testing people,
you delegate to them more often, which frees
you to focus on the most critical strategic matters facing the business. This will make you
more successful and a more attractive candidate for your own future promotion.
Evaluation and Alignment
The world is constantly changing. Your customers’ needs change; your business evolves
(going, for instance, from high growth to mature); new products and distribution methods
emerge as threats. When these changes happen, if you don’t change along with them, you
can get seriously out of alignment. The types
of people you hire, the way you organize
them, the economic incentives you offer
them, and even the nature of the tasks you delegate no longer create the culture and outcomes that are critical to the success of your
business. It’s your job to make sure that the design of your organization is aligned with the
key success factors for the business. Ask your-
harvard business review • january 2007
self: Am I attuned to changes in the business environment that would require a change in the way
we organize and run our business?
Such clear-sightedness is, of course, hard to
achieve. As a leader, you may be too close to
the business to see subtle changes that are continually occurring. Because you probably played
a central role in building and designing the
business, it may be emotionally very difficult
to make meaningful changes. You may have to
fire certain employees—people you recruited
and hired. You may also have to acknowledge
that you made some mistakes and be open to
changing your own operating style in a way
that is uncomfortable for some period of time.
Because of the difficulty in facing these issues,
it’s sometimes wise to call on high-potential
subordinates to take a fresh look at the business. This approach can be quite effective because junior employees are often not as emotionally invested as you are and can see more
objectively what needs to be done. This approach is also a good way to challenge your future leaders and give them a valuable development experience. You’ll give them a chance to
exercise their strategic skills; you’ll get a
glimpse of their potential (which relates to the
earlier discussion of succession planning), and
you might just get some terrific new ideas for
how to run the business.
This approach worked for the CEO of a high
technology business in northern California,
whose company had been one of the early innovators in its product space but, in recent years,
had begun to falter and lose market share. In
its early days, the company’s primary success
factors had been product innovation and satisfying customer needs. It had aggressively hired
innovative engineers and marketing personnel. As new competitors emerged, customers
began to focus more on cost and service (in the
form of more sophisticated applications development). Stepping back, the CEO sensed that
he needed to redesign the company with a different mix of people, a new organization, and a
revised incentive structure. Rather than try to
come up with a new model himself, he asked a
more junior group of executives to formulate a
new company design as if they had a “clean
sheet of paper.” Their study took a number of
weeks, but upon completion, it led to several
recommendations that the CEO immediately
began to implement. For example, they suggested colocating the engineering and sales de-
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