The Leadership Vacuum
The cover story on Business World 22nd October "The Search for CEO's" uncovered a potentially serious crisis - The Leadership Crisis!. Interestingly the study was comprehensive and cut across not just IT/ITES (for us Bangaloreans), but Financial Services, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Real Estate, Travel, Auto, Retail, Energy and Services.
Here goes.. India needs 3,700 top executives over the next two years. Add to this, the fact that 50,000 new companies are formed each year and the situation feels out of hand. While the article was not prescriptive, it provoked me to pick up the baton and think through it! How do we avert this crisis looming large?
A two pronged approach would be essential:
Short Term: The first step is to avert a crisis. Solutions must be tried and tested in other parts of the globe. Some prescriptions based on experiences in US, Singapore,etc.
- Interim CXO's may gain momentum. This would reduce opportunity loss, save time and leverage the experience of people who have been there, done that, to deliver on demand. Mentorship can attain a new meaning with Senior Interim Experts mentoring junior team members.
- Importing Global Talent: This trend is already evident in emerging sectors such as Retail, Biotech, Energy,etc., where the India Talent pool is limited. This is paving the way for a global workforce, even in Indian companies.
Medium Term: The focus must be on building the leadership pipeline. While the obvious choices are extensive training and mentoring, companies must have a clear program which identifies leadership potential and addresses:
- Skill Gaps: Skills are trainable, this should not be a challenge.
- Behavioural Gaps : These are more complex and require a coaching based approach which identifies behavioural gaps and puts in place a plan to address them, and monitor progress.
Overcoming this crisis could mean the birth of three big trends:
- Retired Experts and Ex-CEO's, will be in demand once-again for their expertise as Interim CXO's.
- India may start moving towards becoming a Free Agent Nation with the tribe of freelance experts growing.
- We will probably start witnessing the growth of a new industry - the Executive Coaching Industry.
Exciting to say the least..
