What we miss in Leadership Development - Redundancy!

Yes, you read it right. I am saying that there needs to be a certain element of employee redundancy for a function / organization to prosper. Why am I saying this?

Because unless you are willing to move your high potential employees to explore other areas of work in the organization, they will never develop to become ‘General’ managers. We will continue to promote (read re-designate because the role will never change except volume) employees basis current performance and not think of developing rounded skills which are vital at leadership levels in any organization. Learning out of your comfort zone will never happen if there is no one to take the place of the high-performer.

Job Rotation as a concept has been much talked and written about. However, one tends to miss out on certain basic pre-requisites before thinking of this:

• Top management will – This is a no-brainer. Unless the top team is willing to make a few sacrifices at a tactical level to make sure that we have ready leaders in future, no job rotation program will ever work. Long-term vision has to precede shorter-term decisions.

• Sustainability – Typically, our top performers become indispensable. However, sustainability over a period of time cannot be person dependent. That’s why the redundancy is much needed to keep things flowing smoothly.

• Mortality – Who is responsible for the mortality of the organization? In owner driven firms, this one is easy. But for so-called ‘professional’ organizations, one needs to constantly be on the lookout and create new leaders. Not easy.

Assuming all this in place, how does one go about operationalizing the job rotation programs:

Identify your high potentials (HiPos) – Mind you, not the high performers. Keep a ratio of least 3 aspirants for a critical position. I won’t get into the tools required to do this. There is a plethora of them available in the HR market.

Ask them – Telling them that they are in the HiPo list will cut down the possibility of losing them by more than half. You don’t want your investments in getting them ready going down the drain just because they didn’t know. Ask them if they are interested at all. Some of them might be happy with the functional growth. Shifting them elsewhere will only demotivate them.

Manage collateral damage – At this point, you might end up losing some high performing employees since they would have wanted their names in the list. Anticipate this and be ready before it happens.

Mentor the HiPos - Leadership readiness is not a 100m sprint. Think of it like a marathon. Have a 5 year plan and give enough time in each of the functions. No function is more or less important for an organization in the long term. Assign long term mentors to them who have no direct interest in their growth / failure. Mentoring services can also be got from industry / HR experts outside the organization. The HiPos will need only guidance on a fortnightly / monthly basis.

The schedule is sacrosanct – Have a rotational program for at least 18 months in one project / role. Do not give in to the lure of extending the time limit for the project / role even if it’s working very well. Remember the long term vision at this time.

And keep remembering again and again, the leadership development program as a whole is for the greater organizational good. While some maybe born with the requisite skills, others can be made into leaders. And it’s our job to do that.

The best ways to disengage employees

Organizations spend a lot of time figuring out how to keep their employees engaged. What they fail to avoid are basic tenets that are real put-offs for high performing employees.

I just thought it would be worthwhile to put down the top ways to disengage employees.

• The ‘Culture’ at the workplace – Little things said or informal rules in the organization go a long way in employees forming an opinion about the workplace. Simple things like having to wait for the boss to leave or a casual comment like “Half-day today?” when someone is leaving at the official closing time goes a long way in forming the opinion in minds of the employees.

• The “dictatorial” managers – The best way to make an employee hate his/her job is giving them a “bad” boss. A “bad” boss could be defined as, but not limited to, anyone who:
  - does not value your time
  - expects you to be on his beck and call at all times
  - treats you as his “flunk”
  - shouts/abuses
  - does not guide you and expects you to deliver what he ‘thinks’
  - has no solutions when you go to him with a problem

• “Bad” work – A lot of employees, more so those who are fresh out of campus come to the workplace thinking that they would get ‘strategic’ work from day 1 without understanding what is going on at the grassroots. So any work you give them is not up-to the mark. This is not to say that there are cases where there is no realistic job preview at the selection stage thereby leading to dissatisfaction – both at the employer and the employee end.

• NO work – What is even worse than “bad” work is NO work. As they say, an empty mind is a devil’s workshop. Employees that have no work tend to spread their disgruntlement to others as well. They tend to waste their own time as well as that of others. Lot of employers tend to think that employees will get the message and leave when they have no work. However, I have seen employees who love it when they have no work and they are most comfortable in this setting.

• Poorly implemented PMS – A sure shot way of disengaging a high performer in your team is to keep giving him/her feedback throughout the year that he/she is god’s gift to the organization but conveniently forget this during the appraisal process. A high performer will most definitely leave if he/she feels that the ratings in the Performance Appraisal Process do not justify the effort put in relative to others.

• No Parity in Recruitment/Designation – I have seen a lot of organizations give a higher level/designation to newcomers. While this may be a good tactic to attract talent from the market, this can have disastrous consequences if you forget the existing employees in the organization. The reward for time spent in the organization has to be visible to everyone. If this does not happen, we can be sure of the attrition figures hitting the roof.

• Stagnant Career Path – If employees start to feel that they have hit a ceiling with regard to their growth path in the organization, you will see their performance dip with time, ultimately leading to attrition. This could even happen with a new manager coming in thereby giving the message to the team that they are not ready for the next step.

• Compensation – This is most often thought of as the first and the only way to keep employees motivated and engaged. I have deliberately kept it for the last because this is not true. While a threshold amount of money is always desirable, compensation is not the prime reason to leave any organization for most employees, unless it is a huge jump in the absolute amount. Compensation can serve as an effective tool for attraction – but most companies forget that as far as retention is concerned, compensation can only play a limited role.
  

So instead of giving flowers in the induction process (which is seen as a tool for engagement), let us try to get the basics right and try not to disengage employees.