Manage HR Magazine | Monday, February 14, 2022
Leadership development is a long-term investment, but it may also address immediate issues
FREMONT, CA: For a variety of reasons, developing managers and leaders in middle-market organizations is a significantly different issue than in huge corporations.These issues cannot be dismissed; they reflect real restrictions and concerns. They don't have a lot of layers of hierarchy and rely on informal talent management and development practices. And every leader, from the CEO on down, has a full plate of daily obligations and little capacity for tasks that do not advance the day's job.
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However, it's critical to overcome the obstacles since middle-market organizations stand to gain a lot from leadership development programmes, and not doing so can cost them a lot of money. Designing and delivering a programme that is appropriate for the audience does not have to be difficult. According to data from the National Center for the Middle Market, there is a definite link between good talent planning and corporate performance. However, while leaders give themselves high marks for their ability to identify and evaluate their best performers, they give themselves low marks in four critical areas addressed by leadership development programmes: succession planning, developing high potentials, identifying retention risks, and mapping and filling skill gaps.
One must create a programme that addresses pressing issues. Leadership development is a long-term investment, but it may also address immediate issues. If one frames a resource restriction correctly, what appears to be a resource constraint — less money, less time — can vanish. Further one should concentrate on scaling rather than merely expanding. Growth and scale are not synonymous. In general, one thinks about growth in terms of a straight line: As a company's revenue grows, it adds new resources such as money, employees, or technology. Scaling, on the other hand, occurs when revenue increases without a significant increase in resources. Understanding the difference gave the health-tech firm a new perspective on leadership development.
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