Studies show a growing sense of urgency for succession planning. One survey found 92% of respondents felt it was risky not to have a succession plan for key employees but only 25% of companies feel they’ve identified adequate successor candidates and less than half have a process for developing candidates. Other research shows 70% of […]
Read post »Check all that apply: Speed Traps and Tyranny of the Urgent – flooded by e-mails, endless meetings, and crisis management our team is often reactive and loses sight of the big picture. Partial and Piecemeal Programs – leadership development, succession planning, customer service, lean, safety, talent/performance management, IT systems, executive coaching, are separate programs not well linked […]
Read post »Despite extensive use of competency models and annual performance appraisals, our research shows that only 10 percent of leaders have an individual or personal development plan and are actively making progress on it. What’s going on? Most leaders are career driven and want personal and professional growth. Many want promotions, bigger opportunities, and higher levels […]
Read post »Our organizations desperately want and need much stronger leadership and coaching at all levels. But most organizations aren’t significantly improving employee engagement, customer satisfaction, attracting and retaining top talent, succession planning, increasing health and safety, or energizing organization culture. Traditional leadership and coaching skill development methods are producing very little behavior change. Current approaches are […]
Read post »Many succession planning processes involve identifying and developing high potential leaders. As with promising amateur athletes working to secure very scarce spots at the professional level of their sport, not every leader considered to have strong potential grows in their career to ever higher leadership roles. Through our evidence-based approaches to identifying key leadership skills […]
Read post »There are many reasons leadership teams allow their priorities to be badly distorted. Things that matter most — team dynamics, key strategic priorities, and organization change and development efforts — are often crowded out by things that matter least — the crisis du jour or technical problems better solved by those closest to the action. […]
Read post »One of the “7 Reasons Change and Development Programs Fail” is a partial and piecemeal approach to implementing programs like engagement, customer service, succession planning, safety, performance management, talent management, lean/six sigma, and IT. Our “compass model” has evolved from culture development work with dozens of organizations. It’s often used during Leadership Team Retreats for […]
Read post »My last blog, “7 Reasons Change and Development Programs Fail“, concluded that a senior leadership team retreat lays the foundation for successful change and development initiatives. This is often the intact senior leadership team heading up a department, division, or the entire organization. Depending on the retreat objectives and length, one or sometimes two, levels […]
Read post »As part of succession planning many organizations are concerned about developing their next generation of senior leaders. Many large companies in well-established industries like financial services, resources, manufacturing, and the like or public sector, education, and healthcare organizations struggle with getting middle and senior managers to embrace leadership development opportunities. We’ve recently published a case […]
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The Conference Board of Canada recently published a report summarizing their research on leadership development from a cross section of public and private sector organizations. Participants identified their top leadership development drivers as: addressing declining levels of leadership capacity planning for succession and growing the talent pool engaging and mobilizing employees managing changing demographics and […]
Read post »Leadership competency models are now used widely by many organizations to define the skills and behaviors of effective leaders. They’re often used for “talent management” such as coaching and development, performance management, succession planning, identifying and developing high potentials/emerging leaders, and the like. Many competency models are multi-layered with differing competencies for supervisors, managers, and […]
Read post »Talent Management including succession planning, developing high potentials, and attracting and retaining top people is now a critical issue. During the financial crisis and economic downturn of the last few years organizations slowed or stopped leadership development. As executives now face a wave of retiring Baby Boomers and take a longer term view, “leadership bench […]
Read post »Would you like to move beyond building individual leaders to building a culture of exceptional leadership and coaching in your organization? Are you concerned about succession planning, deepening leadership bench strength, cultivating teamwork, recruiting top talent, increasing retention and engagement, improving customer service, safety and wellness, and increasing sales and profits? These critical issues are […]
Read post »Just after publishing my blog post on “3 Keys to Developing Extraordinary Leadership” Bob Boulton, Leadership Coach — the Human Side of Leadership, cornerlight.net, sent me this e-mail: “Jim, I have followed your work and have always been impressed by the rare combination you display of refreshing yet solid thinking and practical implementable (if that […]
Read post »We’re approaching a crisis point in succession planning and building leadership depth. The 2008 financial crash caused many leaders approaching retirement to put off their plans as their retirement funds sank. Organizations delayed or stopped leadership development as they switched into survival mode. Organizations are now waking up to an urgent new focus on building […]
Read post »In the next 5 -10 years we’re going to see waves of leaders retire. Forward thinking organizations are now deep into succession planning as they prepare for this big generational change. In his Harvard Business Review blog, “We Wait Too Long to Train Our Leaders,” Jack Zenger highlights Zenger Folkman’s research showing that many supervisors […]
Read post »Leadership is fast resembling the famous Mark Twain quote about the weather – everybody’s always talking about it but nobody does anything about it. Based on their ongoing research, The Conference Board of Canada concludes, “Building leadership capacity has been a top priority for several years, at least on paper. The problem is that, while […]
Read post »We’re continuing to get feedback, questions, and comments about culture development following my 60 minute webcast on November 4. If you missed the whirlwind “city bus tour,” you can view the archived presentation (my animated slides synchronized with the audio track) at Leading a Peak Performance Culture. One viewer sent me a good question after […]
Read post »Last week I ran a highly customized Peak Performance Leadership workshop and facilitated a strategy session in beautiful Colorado Springs. It was the perfect place to discuss climbing to higher levels of personal, team, and organization performance — especially during these fast changing and turbulent times. We also got to experience their first heavy snowfall […]
Read post »In the last few months I’ve been working with three executive teams to help strengthen team effectiveness and boost their leadership of major culture change and development efforts. One team heads up a large commercial construction company in Western Canada, another is a European based international mining company, and the third are senior partners in […]
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