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TRENGTH

change wa ve tha t causes you to reexamin e the respect ive tradeoffs

associated with your current lea dership talent strateg y. Four exam-

ples of such changes a re pre sente d in Figure 1 1-1.

In these scenarios, the challenge you f ace is preventing the

change from graduall y sneaking up on yo u. To preven t this from

happening, you’ll ne ed to i denti fy those c hange in dicators that

begin to flag the need for change. Three such i ndicators are:

1. A gradual thinn ing ou t in the size and quality of you r talen t

pipeline (discoveri ng that, for the past four years, the numbe r of

nominations submitted for your high-p otent ial leaders hip p r ogram

have been decre asing at an average rate of 10 percent per y ear)

2. Encountering situations in whic h your organization is left

relatively unprepar ed to meet new organizational or environmental

changes (reali zing that, with a p ick-u p in the economy, it has be-

come more diffi cult t o retai n your best leaders)

3. A downward trend-line on your key performance m etr ics

(such as r eceiv ing a steady decrease in the as sessed quality of new

hires, as evaluated by ratings on their perfo rmanc e appraisals

twelve months after h ire)

Gaining Executive Alignm ent on Chan ges to

Strategy

Regardless of w hich o f thes e two change scenarios s ignal the need

for a chan ge in y our own talent strategy , once you’ve determine d

that a shift in strate gy is i n orde r, you will need to work with your

senior te am to explor e the feasib ility of mak ing a strate gy shift.

The following n ine-p oint plan may prov e helpful in manag ing these

discussions:

1. Provide y our senior team wi th a br ief review of the leader -

ship tale nt strategy that is currently in play and the bus iness

assumptions on which this strate gy was initially based.

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