The Impending Leadership Crisis

76 million Americans, the Baby Boomers, are approaching retirement age. [You might say that: This is the Dawning of the Aging of Aquarius.] But only 44 million are in the pipeline to replace them.

As a consequence -- within the next two to ten years, organizations across the U.S., in virtually all sectors and industries, will face a potential crisis of leadership!

For example:

• According to Taleo, a talent management consultancy, 500 of the largest companies can expect to lose 50% of their senior management in the next five years.
• According to OPM Director Linda Springer, 90% of about 6,000 federal executives will be eligible for retirement over the next ten years.
• A survey commissioned by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 65% of nonprofit leaders are expected to leave their positions by 2009.

The Secret to the Leadership Crisis

Frankly, this is not so much a 'secret.' If you give it just a moment's thought, the solution is obvious:

Identify and develop potential leaders (at all levels).

[Hope you didn't think the secret was headhunting. The nature of the crisis is such that there aren't enough heads to hunt.]

What will distinguish the successful organizations from also-rans is actually doing it.

As we have said in a different (but related) context, every crisis contains not only danger, but also opportunity.

Those organizations, which already have undertaken this, will not just survive, but flourish. They will have capitalized on their primary talent resource -- their current employees -- and be in a better position to pick leadership talent from other organizations.

Although it may already be a bit late to begin this process from scratch, organizations that do so will at least fair better than those that do nothing.

Our articles on Coaching and Mentoring reveal how to develop employees, including potential leaders.

To identify them, see our "Identify New Leaders" article. In it, we propose nine essential traits (emphasizing the three, which are unique to leaders), describe four methods to spot the traits, disclose the underlying secret to revealing a leader's potential (what we call The Harry Truman Factor), and suggest an application for your own workplace.

The Grimmes conduct customized onsite training workshops and large group presentations for organizations in every sector of the economy. Their groundbreaking book on managing people in today's workplace will be published by AMACOM in the second half of 2008. Visit their main website at http://www.GHR-Training.com and topic-specific http://www.Employee-Retention-HQ.com ... and read issues of their own e-newsletter at http://www.WorkplacePeopleSolutions.com

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