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10 FEDA News & Views A product of four years of study in the field of economics, strate- gist Scott Saslow often thinks of things in terms of supply and demand. Makes perfect sense, particularly when mulling over the predicament that a number of companies—small business and corporate—find themselves in con- cerning their struggles to "manage the gap." That's what Saslow, the founder of the Institute for Executive Development (IED), calls the growing divide between the needs of organizations and their abil- ity to secure the right talent to maneu- ver through the thorny layers of future change. "It's an increasingly complex job," says Saslow, an aficionado on the subject of leadership development via years of intense research on what's become his passion. "If being a CEO or an executive of a company was difficult a decade ago," he says, "it's difficult times three today. There's so much incredible change going on in the world, thanks to globalization, technological advances—innovations in every industry—and it's changing the way companies do business soup to nuts, from the way they hire and man- age employees to the way they deal with customers and deliver products." What's been slow to change is the lack of urgency among companies to prepare for the inevitable. Or even more to the point, arm themselves with a stra- NEXT UP By Stacy Ward, Managing Editor fedastacy@verizon.net Why you should be making leadership succession and talent development a priority tegic eye toward succession planning and leadership development, according to a recent study by Saslow's consult- ing firm, IED, and Stanford University's Rock Center for Corporate Governance. Among the number of interesting find- ings: Many companies do not have a working process in place to identify and groom talent for leadership—although they recognize its importance. There's also a disconnect when it comes to the critical role that talent development plays in executing a successful succes- sion plan, says Saslow. Often, the two are treated as distinct entities "instead of one continuous program to gradually develop leadership skills in an organiza- tion," according to findings by IED and Stanford. "The reality is that for more compa- nies than not, succession is episodic, meaning that once a year they have the talent planning discussion," says Saslow. "They take a look at who's in the talent pipeline, discuss who might be ready for retirement, or who could be hired away. The problem with this approach is that it often ends up being too little too late. The companies that are proficient see this as a continual part of their job, and they do it quarterly, not once a year. They're having talent conversations and they're making adjustments along the way, and continually measuring them against how the business is changing. "It takes a long time to identify and develop successors; it's not just some- thing one should do for a few hours once a year." "You can't have an effective succession plan if you're not continually identifying and developing high-performing, high-potential people in your organization, and grooming them to assume greater responsibility." –Blogger Sean Conrad So how do you begin the work of identifying talent within the fold? Start with your business strategy, say experts like Karin Hurt, the CEO of consulting firm Let's Grow Leaders. In other words, ask yourself, "What would be the most important talent, knowledge, roles, skill sets and values needed to lead your com- pany in the next three to five years?" An easy exercise to work toward the meat in the nut is to develop your own com- petency model, says Hurt, who suggests beginning the process by gathering a group of employees that share a similar role within the company (e.g., your top DSR's or a group of team leaders), and then asking them to envision the high- est performers in a specified role. The prompt can be used to encourage them to think about their own role within the company or the role of the people they manage. (See the sidebar on Page 11 for the complete exercise.) "It really gets people thinking about what it takes to be successful in their role," says Hurt, adding that a compe- tency model also can be a great tool