Optimize to Accelerate Leadership Development

Parsimonious Haiku

The race is well-known,

The destination is clear,

Optimize is the key.

FAQ Series: How can I accelerate leadership development? We do not have enough leadership candidates on the top backup bench or enough emerging talent coming up in the system to ensure flourishing and continuity.

 Among the top three recurring questions talent practitioners ask - we’re sure you’ve heard them before - is how to accelerate leadership development. Speed up learning and development. CEOs, Boards, and activist investors demand better, faster actions to ensure leadership pipelines are strong, the bench is full, and future-ready.

 First, let’s play a little word game. You may not always be able to accelerate leadership development, but you can optimize it. Optimizing means doing everything right - using best practice methods we know work to develop leaders efficiently and effectively.

 Succession math is simple and straightforward: developing leaders is a numbers and process game. Succession planning and leadership development should first target the top 2% of roles - those responsible for 80% of key decisions. Once that’s achieved, you can focus on broader development as time and resources allow. While AI-driven tools might help accelerate development for the wider workforce, the top 2% requires more personalized, hand-crafted attention.

 Here’s a 14-point game plan to help you optimize your strategy and get it right

 Optimize Point 1. Establish Your Leadership Turnover Cycle

CEOs cycle about every 5-7 years. When there is a CEO change, it ripples through the organization. There are winners (they stay) and losers (they leave). Lots of people move up one step on the ladder. Every organization has its own turnover at the top analytics. Retirements. Separations. M&A. Failures. Scandals. Health events. Search Firm targeting. At PepsiCo, we used the group picture of the annual top management retreat 5 and 10 years ago and have this year’s top leaders count how many are still here. It's often a startling realization. Determine your leadership turnover cycle. How many top managers and leaders must be replaced on average to maintain operations—10%, 20%, 25%? And how often does this occur? What’s your annual turnover among the top 2% of roles and positions?

 Optimize Point 2. Right Size the Emerging Talent Pool

The pool of emerging talent at the beginning of the race needs to be about three times your cycle number. Because there is leakage from the pool (people leave, are not really that talented, are not interested, or requirements change), the talent pool will get smaller as you get closer to sitting on the top backup bench.

 Optimize Point 3. Scale Talent Across Decades

The succession and leadership development process, when done right, is a twenty-year marathon from internship to a vetted, viable candidate ready for a top 2% position. Twenty years out, the talent pool needs to be three times X. Ten years out, it should be twice X. Five years out, aim for 1.5 times X. The goal is to ensure you have strong options at every stage

 Optimize Point 4. Establish (and Estimate) the Requirements 

OP4a. What are the KSA (Knowledge, Skills, and Attributes) requirements to succeed in the top 2% of jobs generally and specifically for each job now, 5 years out (reasonable projections), 10 years out (best guess), and 15 years out (rough estimate). That’s done through a process called forward-back planning. Take any year in the future and have the best-informed people delineate what the challenges are likely to be at that time. Then, connect KSA package requirements to those conditions.

OP4b. Everything has a STORY

In a survey of the typical content for the top 2% of roles and jobs, we found five slight to material differences in the content of the KSA packages. These talent stories reveal the alignment between the individual and the role.

We named it STORI (an acronym for succession planning) for stickiness. It includes: 

S = Strategic, visionary, and innovative.

T = Technical and functional excellence.

O = Operators, planners, and executors.

R = Relationship management, stakeholder relations, and customer interface.

I = Internation and global management.

 Every job has a STORI Profile – an estimated KSA.

 OP4C. Align STORI Talent with STORI Job Requirements: A Strategic Approach

The early talent pool entry test is roughly binary. Is this person a High Potential or not? In or out and probably maybe in the middle. There is a second determination. Potential for what? Which of the five KSA pages do they have now, want to have in the future and are willing to grow and develop? As the top jobs are different, so are the people in the talent pool. Because of natural skills and tendencies, academic preparation, career preferences and aspirations, each person in the pool has a tentative STORI Profile. Most have a single dominant strength and reasonable backup in one or more. A few have two dominant strengths covered with backup in the rest. Almost no one has them all. Along the journey, STORI Profiles have to be assessed and clarified. Like a warehouse, the contents need to be aligned with the future need. If customers want SUVs and your warehouse is full of Sedans, there will be a problem. Periodically, you need to run a match against future STORI needs and pool SRORI packages and adjust is necessary.

 Optimize Point 5. Each STORI Profile has a Different Development Plan

Development for the five different STORI destinations is materially different. At the end, each top job should be filled with a top 10% aligned KSA package. Best in class. Assembled into high-performance collaborative teams. By the way, the five packages do not always work very well with each other, so building great teams requires having top 10% teaming skills.  Development is using the 70%jobs/20%others/10%self/25% hardships theme with a nod toward VIDA (Variety, Intensity, Diversity, Adversity) to get ready for VUCA (Volitivity, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity). Use work as a classroom.

 Action Learning. Each emerging High Potential has a path to one or more STORI roles. In 20 years, an emerging talent may go through about twelve jobs. To optimize, every job has to be aligned and developmental. Each boss has to be developmental. In general, there are twenty-three job type options from which twelve can be selected. Things like M&A, start-up, fix-it, large scale, functional roles, international. It’s called assignmentology. Best twelve jobs with the best developmental bosses with a STORI target in mind.

 Optimize Point 6. Engage and Retain

Not only do you have to hire emerging talent to begin with, you also have to keep them. Engagement and retention are not easy. True (vetted, validated, verified) High Potentials are not patient. They will comfortably leave and look for opportunities elsewhere if not treated well. We studied what High Potentials are looking for. Trust in higher management to create and execute the right strategies. They want to work for winners.  They do not react well to integrity scandals. They want palpable (they can see it, feel it, and experience it) development. My boss cares. Their boss cares. Top management cares. Resources are available. They want to be listened to (less concern about acting on suggestions, they just want to be heard). Sensitive to addressing incompetence in top 2% roles. And pay and benefits have to be at the top of the range.

 Optimize Point 7. Manage Movement.

True High Potentials need to spend less time in jobs to learn what they need to learn. While they are there, they will contribute and perform but not best in class. They don’t stay long enough to be the best on the team. They only become top performers in their last few jobs.

 Optimize Point 8. Manage Promotions

Force the organization to manage speed of opportunities. Don’t promote someone who is not clearly better than an expectant High Potential. Rank ordering in the annual people review is important. Make tough decisions. There are twelve division managers. Rank ordered from best to least. Compared to High Potential regional managers, two are already better than two of the divisions managers now. Bite the bullet. Make the change.

 Optimize Point 9. Fight Talent Hoarding

Address hoarding and unit autonomy (state’s rights). While it's natural for line managers and team leaders to want to retain High Potentials, doing so can hinder the overall leadership development process. Once these individuals have gained the necessary experience, it’s crucial to move them on. In multi-unit or divisional organizations, managers might resist this, believing they should be able to keep 'their' talent. However, High Potentials are organizational assets, not just permanent resources for individual units. They should be managed as part of a broader talent pool, not bound by unit-level claims.

 Optimize Point 10. Give Special Treatment. 

Face and embrace the reality of elitism. True High Potentials receive opportunities that others do not, and while this may seem like unequal treatment, it’s justified. The success of the top 2% directly benefits the entire organization. People and Talent are naturally drawn to winners. High Potentials get access to exclusive meetings, off-sites, and VIP events that others at the same level may not. They may travel on company planes sooner, and benefit from sponsors, mentors, and coaches unavailable to their peers. They engage in more significant interactions with senior executives and join high-level business trips. This selective development is crucial for driving organizational excellence.

Optimize Point 11. Avoid Expensive Executive Searches

Search is more expensive than developing your own. Don’t let someone else develop your children! Searched executives turn over faster than internally grown talent.

 Optimize Point 12. Chose Science Based Accuracy

Today, surveys, questionnaires, checklists, and tests offer more reliable methods to accurately identify High Potentials and their STORI Profiles. Subjective assessments are currently yielding about 50% inaccuracies, leading to suboptimal results, wasted resources, and disappointed employees. It’s time to embrace data-driven, science-based approaches to improve accuracy and efficiency.

OP13. Embrace New Technology Developmental Tools

AI/VR/AR-based tools will provide more access to developmental advice and counsel and help all employees develop skills. High Potentials will be more frequent users. Be an early adopter and experimenter.

OP14. Enhance Learning Agility

We know learning agility is one of the key characteristics of a High Potential. It can be enhanced. And then, every learning opportunity yields better results. 

Accelerate? Learn faster? Not really.

Optimize? Provide more opportunities to learn. Absolutely.

Focus on executing the right best practice actions at the right time to make the most of your developmental efforts. Optimizing processes and ensuring that every step is performed correctly will yield substantial improvements and long-term success. It will increase leadership development.

 Bob & LM

www.TalentTelligent.com