Despite effective leaders being the cornerstone of business success, leadership pipeline planning isn’t happening, research by Penna - the global people management business - finds today.
Conducted amongst 1,000 senior professionals, the research found that the majority (63%) do not know if they have a leadership pipeline within their organisation - or they don’t actively plan for what their future leadership will look like. This trend is further supported by Deloitte’s 2015 Global Human Capital Trends report[1], which found that despite ‘building leadership’ remaining paramount within organisations - little or no progress has been made in the last year. In fact, the capability gap for building great leaders has widened not just in the UK, but globally.
Penny de Valk, Managing Director of Penna’s Talent Practice said of the research, “It’s concerning how many organisations are failing to plan their leadership pipeline. At a time when leadership capability is a precious commodity and critical to an organisation’s success, we need to get better at succession planning and developing leaders at all levels. Building a leadership pipeline means being able to spot and develop potential and companies that are doing this well have a real source of competitive advantage.”
This competitive advantage is echoed by the findings showing that the organisations that do actively plan their leadership pipeline believe it’s paying off with almost half (46%) saying they have a good talent pipeline of future leaders and almost a quarter (23%) going one step further to say it is ‘very strong’.
Penny de Valk continues, “Considering that 30% of investor’s decision making is based on quality of leadership[2] - organisations are taking a real gamble with not planning. Investing the time in planning leadership pipelines now will help organisations reduce the risk of future leadership shortfalls acting as a drag on business growth. This investment shouldn’t be limited to succession planning within just the top team either. A strong pipeline should consider talent from across the entire organization – after all, among junior teams could be budding future leaders and it is critical that their potential is recognised.”
[1] http://dupress.com/articles/introduction-human-capital-trends-2015/
[2] https://hbr.org/2015/04/calculating-the-market-value-of-leadership