Talent Management When the Succession Pipeline Gets Clogged

Talent Management When the Succession Pipeline Gets Clogged:
Nobody Told Us the 21st Century Would Be Like This
By Bob Moore, CMC, The Effectiveness Coach®

Word Count: 315 Words
Reading Time: About 2 minutes

When I did the original research for my book, Turning Good People Into Top Talent: Key Leadership Strategies for a Winning Company, the conventional wisdom was the 21st Century would bring a flood of retiring executives and predictions of inadequate workforce numbers by 2010 (now upon us). Thus, failure to have adequate succession plans would put organizations at risk.

In the book, I included comments from Lawrence Bossidy, co-author of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, who said "No company can expect to beat the competition unless it has the best human capital and promotes those people to pivotal positions. Meeting medium and long-term milestones greatly depends on having a pipeline of promising and promotable employees."

However, a recent survey of 2,200 U.S. employees conducted by consultants Watson Wyatt Worldwide, Inc. discovered about half of individuals age 50 or older planned to postpone retirement to work at least three years longer. This is but one example of the cause of clogged promotion pipelines.

Thus, talent management executives charged with aligning human capital with the organization's strategic objectives must rethink their approach for retaining and keeping high potential rising stars fully engaged.

Here are 4 key elements to examine:

1. Talent matched for the position which considers accountability and responsibility.

2. Engagement and empowerment that assures optimal utilization of all talent in key positions.

3. Alignment of all strategic issues throughout the organization with clarity of purpose, vision, values, goals, roles and procedures.

4. Create a culture of continuous learning that assures mastery of the essential skills for all key positions.

When compensation is considered adequate, these elements, along with systematic professional development, are the strongest factors to retain top talent in any economy.

Enthusiastically,

Bob

Bob Moore, CMC®, President
Effectiveness, Inc/The Effectiveness Coach®
Aligning Human Capital with Strategic Objectives

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