Smeal Op-Ed: Lessons To Be Learned In Leadership Development

Albert A. Vicere, one of the country's top leadership coaches, is a professor of strategic leadership at Penn State's Smeal College of Business and president of Vicere Associates, Inc. Visit www.vicere.com.

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (March 11, 2005)—According to a new survey by consulting firm Executive Development Associates, General Electric was once again ranked as the best company for developing leadership talent by Chief Learning Officers, heads of executive development at major companies, and other experts in the field.

More than two thirds of the voters selected GE as the top talent developer, with Johnson & Johnson, Dell, IBM, and Weyerhaeuser rounding out the top five. Bank of America, PepsiCo, UBS, Cisco, and Proctor & Gamble finished off the top ten.

Says Mike Dulworth, managing director of Executive Development Associates, "These companies have made a deep commitment to leadership development because it directly leads to the successful execution of business strategy and exceptional business results."

And who can argue with the long-term performance of the top 10 companies?

Brian Sullivan, CEO and chairman of the executive search firm Christian & Timbers, commented on GE's perennial presence at the top of the leadership development pyramid. "Their commitment to leadership development runs through all layers of the organization. It's part of their culture."

Does that engrained commitment to development pay off? Sullivan sees a direct connection between GE's commitment to talent development and recruitment. "No question, their reputation for developing talent helps them recruit and retain top caliber people. The company puts time and money into grooming their execs. Which top performer wouldn't like the idea of being given the opportunity to compete, to do interesting new things, and to be given a shot at the top?"

Third-ranked Dell is a relative newcomer to the upper echelon of leadership development. According to Andy Esparza, VP Talent Development and Retention at Dell, "As a 20 year old company that grew rapidly, we used to go outside for talent when we needed it. We didn't focus on internal development. But as a result, turnover was higher, experienced folks were disenchanted, and we had no succession process."

For a company that has its sights set on continued aggressive growth, this was a problem. "We need depth and a bench," says Esparza, "and we have strong culture but even so, without effective leadership, our values weren't spreading fast enough among the many new people we continued to hire."

Esparza said 2003 was the inflection point for Dell. "Through our employee survey 'Tell Dell,' our people told us they were unhappy with their direct leadership and that was having an impact on morale and performance. So we took stock and realized we needed to invest in leadership development -- and when we decide to do something, we execute"

Key to Dell's success was that Chairman Michael Dell and CEO Kevin Rollins jumped on the band wagon. They participated in their own 360-degree assessment and even shared their assessments with their colleagues, modeling the behaviors they were asking of leaders at all levels of Dell. "It sounds like a cliche," says Esparza," but it was very powerful."

Today at Dell, leadership development is a top management priority. "We're spending four-to-five times more time on it now," says Esparza. It's so important that Esparza even interrupted a meeting of the senior executive team to give them the news of Dell's cracking the top 10 list. "It's been such a big issue for us that the senior execs felt even more proud than the HR team," Esparza noted.

Mary Eckenrod, Vice President of Worldwide Talent, Resourcing and Development at ninth-ranked Cisco Systems echoes the Dell perspective. "Because we grew so fast in the boom years, we were more focused on recruiting than building leadership depth. Now we know that if we're going to keep growing, we need to find the talented people in this organization and accelerate their development."

To Eckenrod and Cisco, all the fuss about leadership development it comes down to simple strategy, "Leaders need to grow their business. To do that, they need to grow their people. To do that, they need too grow themselves." It's a simple strategy that the top 10 companies have put into action, and if results are any indication, it's a strategy that works.