Bench Strength

CHAPTER 11

M

AKING

M

ID

-C

OURSE

C

ORRECTIONS

No matter how far you have gone down the

wrong road, turn back.

—T

URKISH PROVERB

No matter how carefully one constructs and implements an organi-

zational talen t strategy, occas ional ly eve ry manager makes talent

decisions that either prov e to be wrong or that need to be reexam-

ined based on ev olving orga nizat ional requirements. The trick is to

develop ‘‘early aler t systems’’ that q uickly sign al that a talent de -

cision isn’t working, and then take actions t o correct it. In this

chapter I ’ll pr ovide suggestion s for managing two d iffe rent ty pes

of mid-course corrections on talent management. The fir st involves

making changes to ineffective ta lent strategies, while the second

involves corre cting ineffectiv e talent dep loyme nt dec isions.

When and How t o Make Chan ges to Your Talent

Strategy

Earlier, in Chapter 9 , I str essed the importance of remaining flexi-

ble and adapting one’ s strategy to changing conditions. Quite often

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TRENGTH

we find th at this requires not just a subtle refinem ent of tactics, but

a complete review and subsequent overhaul of one’s talent strategy.

Inevitably, when this situ ation occurs it is because the under lying

conditions tha t drove a tal ent strategy have drama tically changed.

Accordingly, it’s impor ta nt to c ontin ually monitor those und erly-

ing conditions to see whether you are now operating under a differ-

ent organ izati onal and environmental scenario. L et’s b riefl y

consider how changes to leadership strategy play out in both a

‘‘critical-event’’ scena rio an d an ‘‘incremental-change’’ scenario.

The Critical-Event Scenario

At s ome point, y our organiz ation may encounte r a catalyt ic event

thatclearlysignalstheneedforachangeinyourleadershiptalent

strategy. To illustr ate this, consider the following hy pothe tical

case:

A la rge consume r products company that’s been operating ex-

clusively in th e U.S. market, has tradi tionally re lied o n inte rnal

development an d targ eted s uccess ion (the Ma ke and Stream Strat-

egies) to fill its lea dersh ip pipeline. While this has worked q uite

well in th e past, things are about to change. The company pur-

chases a s maller firm that’ s head quar t ered in Germ any an d dist rib-

utes its own pro ducts throughout Central Europe. T he acquiring

company’s CEO decides to cross-pollin ate his leadershi p tale nt

pool by identifying those future leaders who have the flexibility,

learning agility, and sophistic ation to work comfortably within

both of th ese different work cult ures and env ironm ents. His ch al-

lengetohisCTOistoconsiderwhetherthetalentmanagement

strategy that h is company h as had in pla ce for the pa st ten years is

well aligned with these new challenges. Faced with this situation,

what would you recomm end?

Here is a one possible solution:

You determine that the problem with retaining the Stream

Strategy is that too m any le adership as sessment, successor, a nd

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