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Succession Planning Perspectives

Published August 2007

Cloned Development Contributes to Crisis of Leadership Supply

Kellye Whitney

The current generation's leaders always seem to have a list of complaints about members of the next generation: They're lazy. They're rude. They're disrespectful. But what if those seemingly negative characteristics could be shaped to create tomorrow's valued leaders? More important, what if the development piece of your organization's succession plan doesn't incorporate this type of development?

Ron Carucci, founding partner of strategic change and leadership firm Passages Consulting, and author of "Leadership Divided: What Emerging Leaders Need and What You Might Be Missing," said the far-ringing cry about the talent war or crisis of supply as it pertains to leaders is misleading.

According to his data and research, he said, there are plenty of leaders available, and they're actually dying to lead. They just have no desire to lead as they have been led.

"This is a generation of leaders having a mantle passed to them of corruption, deceit and misused power, post-Enron, from status-hungry workaholics," Carucci said. "Those are their labels for the generation of leaders from whom they're inheriting the baton. The crisis of supply comes when they opt out. They say, 'If that's what leadership is, no thanks.' They're quite fine choosing alternative paths for their career, and that's driving succession planning and leadership people crazy because the typical carrots you hold out, the typical ways you incent folks to careers aren't working anymore."

The real crisis is not one of supply but of relationships, Carucci explained — talent professionals should build relationships with tomorrow's leaders that honor who they want to become, not attempt to mold them into carbon copies of today's leaders. He said any attempt to do so will be met with a quick-trigger impulse toward rejection.

"We ramrod succession planning processes and force people's names onto slates," Carucci said. "If you examine all the slates in most succession processes, what you see is the same five names being positioned for the same 35 jobs. It's kind of silly.

"Let's just be honest about what we're doing here. Succession planning is one of the most critical, most vital things you do for the future of your organization. We can't keep doing these pretend processes where the people who look the same get to be on slates, and the people who are different don't."

Opening the door to unconventional leadership candidates means creating development opportunities that maximize cross-boundary, cross-functional experiences. Essentially, Carucci said organizations must train horizontally, not vertically, to get cross-generational people in a room together so they can learn and respect their differences.

"Design learning events that let people have real conversations," Carucci said. "Have conversations that really allow people to have a voice. We want the next generation to find their voice, but we resent that their voice now is in formation — it's strident, it's abrasive, it's loose, it's not articulate and it's never going to become a polished, powerful voice if we don't let them use it."