Bench Strength

Figure 11-1. Factors that may cause you to reevaluate your talent strategy.

Your Current Talent Strategy Changes that Are Impacting Your

Strategy

Required Revisions to Your

Strategy

Up to now you’ve relied on a

make/foundation strategy to support the

large-scale development of your overall

leadership talent base.

But your organization is attempting to

make inroads in a completely new

market—one that will also require the

rapid adoption of new technology.

Requiring you to jumpstart these efforts by

switching to a talent buy/trade-up strategy,

and importing key change agents into your

company.

For the past few years your new company

has employed a buy/build-out strategy to

quickly exploit an exploding market.

But you now have in place the bulk of the

leadership talent needed to drive your

business. Your challenge now becomes

building a sustainable talent base, and

giving more attention to the issues of

succession and retention.

So you will begin to deemphasize your

external search efforts, to focus more on a

make/stream strategy that targets

successors for your most critical

leadership positions.

So far you’ve been able to rely on informal

networks to fill leadership positions with

qualified managers.

But your customer base is becoming much

more diverse—a factor which isn’t

reflected in your senior management

structure.

As a result, you’ve decided to supplement

your standard search approaches with

nontraditional sourcing, such as outreach

programs to professional associations for

diverse groups of managers.

So far your company has relied on

management nominations and

performance appraisal data to select

qualified HIPO leadership candidates.

Each division is annually allocated a

certain number of HIPO slots, and in

previous years you’ve had no problem

using this process to obtain a strong pool

of candidates.

But you realize that your leadership

pipeline has thinned out over the past few

years, due to a high percentage of

executives who have entered retirement.

Looking ahead, the picture gets worse as

more of your leaders become eligible for

retirement over the next few years.

Consequently, you will need to look across

your enterprise for the best candidates for

your HIPO pool. From now on, HIPO

selection will be competitive across your

company, and additional selection

measures, such as intelligence tests and

360° feedback, will be use to provide a

system of checks-and-balances on

candidates.

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