The future of your company is NOW!

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You have a great management team. They're well trained and provide great leadership to their direct reports. They make great decisions. They are passionate about what they do and there is very little coaching needed to help them reach the company goals. But wait…How many of them will be retiring or leaving your company in the next five years? Have you done any future planning?

Most companies have invested time and resources to develop the leadership team. It probably took years to find just the right mix of diverse thinking, skills, communication styles, and talents. It is an art to find just the right mix. But how long will it last?

The leaders in companies must start replacing themselves in order to secure the future of the business. The economy will change. The competition is at our heels. People will move on.

How secure is the future of your company?

What have you done to recruit and develop the next generation of leadership in your company? Merely setting goals to gain greater market share or increase revenue will not put you in a position to be in existence in ten years. There must be a strategy in place that maps out a plan for the future.

One definition of strategy states to identify what you will do that is different than your competition.  Part of the strategy must include a strategy regarding your human resources. Take a look at your management team. Are they all baby boomers? In most companies, baby boomers make up the majority of the Executive Management team. A Washington Post article tells us that as of today, 33% of all employees are eligible to retire, and 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day.

It takes three to five years to recruit the person to fit the culture of a company and develop their skills and talents to replace a person who leaves an executive position. You may already have “the right people” working in your company, but have you started to train them for the next position? Do they want the next position?

This may all sound like common sense.

However, the reality is that most companies think they still have time to work on this issue. But they really just keep putting off future planning. Not until members of their executive team start to leave do companies start looking at the issue. Then it might be too late. All of the intellectual capital is leaving along with their experience and connections. It takes years to develop experience, knowledge, and contacts. The time to start is now!

For more on the future planning challenge, click here. Or read about how we’ve helped other companies work through it here.

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