Executive Talent Management

Top leaders and boards of directors are recognizing that a shortage of executive talent is a significant business risk that must be managed. Consequently, more and more CEOs are taking a personal lead in attracting, retaining, developing, and motivating the talent companies need to drive business growth. We can help you get the best return on personal time invested in talent management by focusing on four areas:

What’s required: Building a profile of the type of leader who will successfully deliver the business strategy into the future – which may be different from what has been required of leaders and rewarded in the past – and communicating these expectations widely. CEOs need to engage the top team, board, and outside experts in analyzing the leadership talent requirements that are driven by their strategy, competitive environment, and change agenda.
Which roles are make-or-break: Identifying mission-critical roles in executing the strategy and ensuring succession plans are in place for them. Some of these roles are obvious, but it will require more insight and analysis to identify others.
What’s available: Assessing and developing the top-tier bench, the executive talent. Armed with an understanding of what it will take to deliver the business strategy, the CEO should be personally involved in taking a hard look at the bench of executive talent currently available in the company. Our research shows companies that consistently deliver superior growth focus first on building executive talent from within.
Who’s next: Making sure there is a system for identifying and developing the next generation of leaders. While it’s not feasible – or advisable – for CEOs to be engaged in managing talent at every level in the organization, they need to be confident that there are processes in place to build a solid pipeline that can fill the top leadership pool for the future.

Talent management is too critical a process to be left to the human resources department to handle on its own. It’s time for CEOs to play a unique and critical role in managing talent at the top.