The danger is real. A certain routine becomes so ingrained that we stop thinking about alternatives. We do no planning nor stretching to reach greater heights of accomplishment. Worse yet, we forget about those who will succeed us when we're gone. The consequence of that is leaving a vacancy, a void that must be filled by another who doesn't have the benefit of our tutelage and mentorship.
Pope Benedict XVI announced last week that he is going to resign on February 28. To say the announcement cause a small stir would be more than understatement. But it brings up a concern that definitely needs to be addressed by all organizations. The papacy is a prime example of the consequences of following an unwise practice to the detriment of the organization.
The Church has gone for more than 600 years without doing any formal succession planning. Of course the stations and protocols and deportment are followed. Etiquette is closely observed. But when it comes to choosing a new pope, little to nothing has been done to groom some logical candidates for the office. The Cardinals must look among their followers (of the cloth) and determine who is the most enlightened to take the reigns after the previous person who held the position died. Then the Cardinals sit in their secret chamber and cast their votes, waiting for the magical moment when they can send up a plume of white smoke that signals they have successfully voted for the right person to lead The Church for the next several decades.
Unfortunately, the successor then needs to rely on more superstition (that he will not die a brief time after being selected by the august body of Cardinals) and embark on what that particular person presumes is the correct direction for The Church and its followers. Has there been time for conversations about policy or change? Maybe but for the most part, those thoughts were sent up in sermons and papers. The reasoning behind the conclusions is vague and not part of a public record.
The resignation of Benedict raises some additional issues that most corporations and businesses include in their officers and directors plans - in the bylaws. Provisions for an annuity, a retirement fund, protocols for how to treat the outgoing Pope compared with the inductee. As a person who has retired, does the former Pope still follow the strictures that normally apply to a priest or does this person become a lay person? Now that he is no longer part of the inner circle, someone must determine whether he can continue to be associated with it and to what degree. What types of things will the outgoing pope be allowed to do is another matter that needs to be considered.
Corporate bylaws provide that should a director or officer reach a point wherein they are no longer able to fulfill the duties of their office, they may take a leave of absence until the condition is brought under control. In the alternative, they may step down from office permanently, providing the body with a date when the resignation will take effect, and request that the Board select a successor. Informally, the Board will consult with the outgoing officer to review potential candidates for the seat. Among the candidates will be those who were put into the succession pool. If none of them prove adequate for the directions in which the organization needs to go, a Selection Committee (like the College of Cardinals) will be created and a search will begin for a successor.
The point is, there are "i"s to be dotted and "t"s to be crossed. There are people who have been in the pipeline who were being groomed for taking the reigns at the right time. But The Church hasn't been functioning in that way. Perhaps because it got into a rut and started doing things according to the old adage of "but that's the way we've always done it" instead of looking at retirement, and not death in office, as another policy matter that's handled in a business manner.
Sponsored Links:
Showing posts with label mentoring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mentoring. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Saturday, November 19, 2011
The Elusive Difference, Part 2
[NOTE: First published on ZoomInfo's Insight Report in May 2007, this article is now republished on The Consultant's Desk in order to preserve its access.]
Developing the Talent
As to developing a pool of qualified candidates, one recommendation is to put in place a mentoring program so that women have role models to watch, learn from, and receive coaching insights. Mentoring provides opportunities for insider education about the traditional way plus small nuances that can be applied in sticky situations where rote is not the route.
The more companies get employees involved in governance and ethics training, the more they will be developing leader thinking, and therefore, candidates qualified for the upper echelons.
One of the reasons women leaders are not recognized is because women are not allowed to express themselves as knowledgeable authorities on meaningful subjects. Open the door to more challenging responsibilities and concepts and you open the door to developing the leadership that’s required.
All of these are wonderful exercises in developing that elusive difference to serve. It isn’t helping us in the here and now to find the names.
Where to Look
Where should we be looking for these untapped leaders, the ones who are not part of the small and evaporating pool? There are government registries of qualified candidates. What I loved about working with ZoomInfo’s PowerSearch is that it allowed such ease of filtering in order to find these types of people.
One way of searching is to start by looking at the industry and then using some of the filters to limit the results by gender and position. That’s a terrific system. You achieve thousands of hits. But on a search for Finance expertise, I discovered I had a lot of women lawyers. I wanted Operations and Audit experts. Customer Support was able to offer a suggestion on how to filter these types of records out of the results.
On yet another search, still in Finance, I found it very easy to narrow results from over 11,000 records to about a dozen by simply inputting the name of an association from which I wanted to cull talent. And the extremely helpful online Customer Support helped me identify an even more efficient way of going after the pearls in the sea. Start with the name of the organization from which you want your candidate to be trained.
The other place to look is development foundations where leadership skills are taught and developed, placement statistics are maintained, and a registry of qualified candidates is held for making recommendations and facilitating connections. One obvious organization that keeps such information is Catalyst’s Corporate Board Service. The International Alliance for Women is a great source for finding qualified nonprofit candidates. There are also geo-specific organizations that serve multiple industries in training, supporting, and connecting qualified women with organizations. And then there's the Secretary of State's registry of minority candidates.
Yet another, and obvious, place to search for these elusive ladies is at MBA programs and alumni associations.
PowerSearch provided an additional advantage in finding literally thousands of hits for women who are in mid-management positions. This is where many think tanks recommend beginning your leadership development process and culling the talent that’s desired. Sometimes finding the right candidate is as easy as looking just below the surface, where the most ripe are hitting the ceiling.
Use of the PowerSearch is easy. And for someone who comes from a legal background and deep familiarity with online research through legal databases, many things made sense. So I quickly found that I’d moved from a simple search to something much more sophisticated. Customer Support made me aware of this. The professional suggested that to refine my skills and results, I may want to consider the Advanced Search training. “Is there an additional cost for this?” I asked. No, it’s included in the subscription price. What a gold mine!
I think we’re going to have a lot of Pelosis who proliferate the landscape. It’s simply a matter of knowing where to look.
[back to The Elusive Difference, Part 1]
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Undoing the Talent Crisis
Who said this is the last year that Ms. Foundation will produce Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day? The radio news reader must have made a mistake. There are arguments for not allowing our 9- to 15-year-old youth to go to a real, live, working office for one day each year. And the arguments run the gamut from mere excuse for missing school, not sufficiently structured to give a real slice of business life, too many risks and corporate liabilities, to attendees are too young to grasp what’s happening.
There’s this buzz in the recruiting community that a talent crisis is imminent. By 2010 (or is it 2017?) we will no longer have a college (or even high school) graduating class that’s capable of critical thinking, able to process information and come up with accurate assessment of it, theorize and draw analogies. There’s shrieking in the industry that the employable numbers are shrinking and completely insufficient to replace the retiring Baby Boomers.
What I say is these are merely shrieks of lazy recruiting Chicken Littles. Actually, several years ago I studied the numbers of our high school graduates and population growth. Both are holding quite strong and steady. There is no decline. What is in decline, however, is the number who are capable of doing good training and who are disciplined enough to explain various nuances in order to develop the skills and talents that are needed for the future jobs.
In Keeping with the History
The history of TOD/SWD is long and admirable. Originating in opening the options for young girls and allowing them the freedom to aspire to leadership in a corporation, the day (due to social pressures) opened itself to being inclusive of boys. Both genders need to be able to evaluate what their future work options are. By exploring these options together, they also level the playing field and open the table to dialogue about the similar challenges and how they can be managed. It is also a time when both genders can see things not as a “him against her” battle. Instead, it is a time when both can consider how to develop the communication and relationship skills so desperately needed for a fully diverse and functional organization.
Early Adopters
University of Pennsylvania grabbed onto the idea of activities for the day and stepped it up a notch or so. It’s a day when business can take advantage of doing something about the emergency shriek of Talent Crisis advent in 2010. Not many businesses have internship programs for youth of these ages. Child labor laws prevent most of those in the 9 to 15 years age brackets from working. But here is the opportunity to make this fourth Thursday of April a time when mentors can develop their initial relationships. Managers can allow job shadowing. And youth can get a feel for what the real workplace is about.
The perpetual objection to Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day (TOD/SWD) is the youth will see this as a day to skip school. From some of the plans laid out by a few businesses, the youth may as well do so rather than collate and staple sheaves of paper. Yet, in addition to University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois at Chicago (in 2000) had some compelling content to offer its participating adults and youth. Stanford’s WorkLife Office also had the right idea in 1998. Maybe your office has some great tweaks on all of this. But here are some suggestions for the day.
Learning Modules
This is a day when a manager and their job shadowing youth can actually get involved in the grist of what it takes to run that part of the business. A situation arises, the two discuss the details of it. In Socratic mode, the pair work through the various alternatives in dealing with it: why one method will be successful, why another will not, and why yet another may be the optimal or a second choice. Then, together, they can determine which step to take. If there is time (that is, by the end of the day), the youth can see the result of their decision making and implementation.
The youth can be involved in telephone conversations and conferences so that they may get the sense of how many are part of the routine day and what is involved in these types of conversations. Before some are started, it would be a good idea to outline how a good conversation should be structured, what is included, the style of language, what’s complete taboo. Likewise with telephone conferences. Here, there is a definite outline and youth should be apprised of this so that they do not have the impression that these are off the cuff telephone calls with a little more splash.
Critical Thinking Challenges
Cheating would be where there is an emergency and the adult assumes complete control of the situation to the exclusion of the youth. Emergencies are the training fodder. Keep the youth involved, talk through the steps. Ask what they believe should be done next and why they have reasoned in that manner. Develop critical thinking skills. Verify, explain what the typical outcome will be and why it is good or not. The adult just may learn from the youth’s feedback. Explain which choice will be implemented. Watch for the results.
Reporting
Proof of the job shadowing and learning process is simple and can be a lesson for the entire class. Have the ones who did job shadowing write a report on what they did for the day. The report should have certain required content so that it is standard and not as prone to subjective grading.
That report can then turned into an oral presentation to the most relevant class. Youth will then field questions and provide answers about the business, what they saw, how things worked, whether they would work in that industry with their new knowledge of the actual workplace compared with stylized presentations from other places.
The Beginning of a Career
Ah, good old TOD/SWD! A time to ready our new workforce for the challenges and actually share with them the joy we derive from our livelihood challenges. A time to explain why we do what we do and why we opted for that. It’s a time to lead another into the fold.
This is the opportunity of a lifetime. If we plan for these annual events, we can develop the skills to prepare a meaningful intern program. Growing from that, a good training regimen can be developed. Managers can begin to discipline themselves to explain processes and build teams who collaborate in developing product for clients and consumers. We’ll watch ourselves growing the qualified talent from the cradle to the official first day. What an impact!
This couldn’t possibly be the last year Ms. Foundation is going to produce Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.
Special Free Week offer to either the Print or Online editions of The Wall Street Journal!!!
There’s this buzz in the recruiting community that a talent crisis is imminent. By 2010 (or is it 2017?) we will no longer have a college (or even high school) graduating class that’s capable of critical thinking, able to process information and come up with accurate assessment of it, theorize and draw analogies. There’s shrieking in the industry that the employable numbers are shrinking and completely insufficient to replace the retiring Baby Boomers.
What I say is these are merely shrieks of lazy recruiting Chicken Littles. Actually, several years ago I studied the numbers of our high school graduates and population growth. Both are holding quite strong and steady. There is no decline. What is in decline, however, is the number who are capable of doing good training and who are disciplined enough to explain various nuances in order to develop the skills and talents that are needed for the future jobs.
In Keeping with the History
The history of TOD/SWD is long and admirable. Originating in opening the options for young girls and allowing them the freedom to aspire to leadership in a corporation, the day (due to social pressures) opened itself to being inclusive of boys. Both genders need to be able to evaluate what their future work options are. By exploring these options together, they also level the playing field and open the table to dialogue about the similar challenges and how they can be managed. It is also a time when both genders can see things not as a “him against her” battle. Instead, it is a time when both can consider how to develop the communication and relationship skills so desperately needed for a fully diverse and functional organization.
Early Adopters
University of Pennsylvania grabbed onto the idea of activities for the day and stepped it up a notch or so. It’s a day when business can take advantage of doing something about the emergency shriek of Talent Crisis advent in 2010. Not many businesses have internship programs for youth of these ages. Child labor laws prevent most of those in the 9 to 15 years age brackets from working. But here is the opportunity to make this fourth Thursday of April a time when mentors can develop their initial relationships. Managers can allow job shadowing. And youth can get a feel for what the real workplace is about.
The perpetual objection to Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day (TOD/SWD) is the youth will see this as a day to skip school. From some of the plans laid out by a few businesses, the youth may as well do so rather than collate and staple sheaves of paper. Yet, in addition to University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois at Chicago (in 2000) had some compelling content to offer its participating adults and youth. Stanford’s WorkLife Office also had the right idea in 1998. Maybe your office has some great tweaks on all of this. But here are some suggestions for the day.
Learning Modules
This is a day when a manager and their job shadowing youth can actually get involved in the grist of what it takes to run that part of the business. A situation arises, the two discuss the details of it. In Socratic mode, the pair work through the various alternatives in dealing with it: why one method will be successful, why another will not, and why yet another may be the optimal or a second choice. Then, together, they can determine which step to take. If there is time (that is, by the end of the day), the youth can see the result of their decision making and implementation.
The youth can be involved in telephone conversations and conferences so that they may get the sense of how many are part of the routine day and what is involved in these types of conversations. Before some are started, it would be a good idea to outline how a good conversation should be structured, what is included, the style of language, what’s complete taboo. Likewise with telephone conferences. Here, there is a definite outline and youth should be apprised of this so that they do not have the impression that these are off the cuff telephone calls with a little more splash.
Critical Thinking Challenges
Cheating would be where there is an emergency and the adult assumes complete control of the situation to the exclusion of the youth. Emergencies are the training fodder. Keep the youth involved, talk through the steps. Ask what they believe should be done next and why they have reasoned in that manner. Develop critical thinking skills. Verify, explain what the typical outcome will be and why it is good or not. The adult just may learn from the youth’s feedback. Explain which choice will be implemented. Watch for the results.
Reporting
Proof of the job shadowing and learning process is simple and can be a lesson for the entire class. Have the ones who did job shadowing write a report on what they did for the day. The report should have certain required content so that it is standard and not as prone to subjective grading.
That report can then turned into an oral presentation to the most relevant class. Youth will then field questions and provide answers about the business, what they saw, how things worked, whether they would work in that industry with their new knowledge of the actual workplace compared with stylized presentations from other places.
The Beginning of a Career
Ah, good old TOD/SWD! A time to ready our new workforce for the challenges and actually share with them the joy we derive from our livelihood challenges. A time to explain why we do what we do and why we opted for that. It’s a time to lead another into the fold.
This is the opportunity of a lifetime. If we plan for these annual events, we can develop the skills to prepare a meaningful intern program. Growing from that, a good training regimen can be developed. Managers can begin to discipline themselves to explain processes and build teams who collaborate in developing product for clients and consumers. We’ll watch ourselves growing the qualified talent from the cradle to the official first day. What an impact!
This couldn’t possibly be the last year Ms. Foundation is going to produce Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.
Special Free Week offer to either the Print or Online editions of The Wall Street Journal!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
