Many organizations plug a new manager into a vacant position without having done anything to develop the talent required for that job, then insist the manager work 60 to 80 hours a week. When the manager burns out, they replace him with a younger model, and the cycle is repeated. Managers – the Ultimate Renewable Resource.
I once worked for such an organization. We called the head office Jurassic Park because:
- It was full of dinosaurs, and
- It seemed like an appropriate location to produce a horror film
In this organization, the only way to advance was to have started when you were sixteen years old, and then work excessive hours your entire working life.
Education was actively discouraged. If you had any aspirations to better yourself through post-secondary education, you had to keep it a secret or risk being put on ‘student status’ which meant your benefits were curtailed, and you were ineligible for advancement.
This company didn’t infuse their management ranks with talent from the outside, either. They very much believed that if you did not ‘grow up’ with this company then you didn’t have any experience worth considering. They didn’t believe their competitors had any talent, nor were skills learned in any other industry worth anything.
It was so inbred, it made the kid on porch playing the banjo in Deliverance look like a Rhodes Scholar.
Interestingly, this company was in a highly competitive industry with a number of new, aggressive entrants to the market. Yet I was once told the company was doing well because it only lost 5% of market share and 2% of revenue in the previous year. That’s right – they measured their success by how little their performance sucked.
You can imagine how this all ends.
In such a company, all the highest potential people leave to go where they can advance their skills and their careers. The few who remain become more overwhelmed than George W. Bush at a Mensa meeting, and sooner or later just give up.
Until now, organizations have been able to get away with treating managers as the Ultimate Renewable Resource. But demographics are quickly turning the tables. The Baby Boomer mass workplace exodus has begun, and many companies are shocked to discover that they are having trouble filling those vacant positions, especially management roles.
If you work for a company where the senior leadership looks anything like the characters from Jurassic Park, how can you evolve from the age of dinosaurs?
Smart organizations have realized that they need to proactively develop potential leaders in-house. When a vacancy arises, they have a pool of qualified talent to choose from, instead of scrambling around trying to find a warm body to fill the position.
The first step is an organizational commitment to ongoing development of leadership skills in employees at all levels.
A Wily Manager Corporate Membership gives you and your co-workers practical, ‘in-the-trenches’ leadership advice that’s actually fun, requires less than 20 minutes a week, and doesn’t take you away from the office.
And best of all, your organization pays. They’ll be happy to foot the bill when they see how inexpensive it is, how easy it is to get started, and all the ways it will benefit the company.
You can help – put us in touch with the right person at your workplace, and we’ll suggest a Wily Manager Corporate Membership for you and your co-workers.