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Features

Published November 2004

Connecting Middle Managers: The Next Wave of Leadership Development

  

  David Austin

As baby-boomers exit the U.S. workforce, businesses are bracing for a dramatic increase in retirement rates, as well as a widening gap in corporate knowledge and leadership. In fact, between 2002 and 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that more than 23 million workers will leave the labor force-the greatest number in history. Perhaps more compelling is the corollary, that more than 40 million new workers will enter the workforce during that same time frame. This massive swing in labor resources over the 10-year period creates risk and opportunity for employers of all shapes and sizes, particularly as senior leadership reaches retirement age and organizations look to the next wave of leadership development. Compounding the challenge is the increasing willingness of employees, middle management in particular, to jump ship after a particularly harsh economic lull.

Chief learning officers who understand these new dynamics must prepare for the resulting change in leadership requirements. Companies should organize around five key pillars to enable the next wave of leadership development:

• Learning Environment: Look to create flexible and sustainable learning environments.
• Communication: Improve corporate communication and information dissemination.
• Trust: Build cultures of trust.
• Advancement: Develop the mechanisms to successfully promote and monitor manager advancement.
• Visibility: Provide greater visibility into the business for middle management.

This article will examine each of these areas, focusing on key strategic and operational measures that can, and should, be taken with the help of technology to ensure that companies are better prepared to address the looming leadership challenge.

Creating a Learning Environment
Often, too much weight is placed on the softer side of learning. While training, communities of practice and mentoring all have valid roles in the enterprise, the return on "soft" investment is difficult to track, tough to validate and uneven in its ability to impact the workforce. Yet companies have invested significant capital in course design, distance learning and training software to try to facilitate this type of learning. The disconnect between the return on investment and the money actually spent offers clear insight into the reasons that budgets for these initiatives are increasingly difficult to justify.

The issue with most training regimens is that they are simply a single instance of instruction with little residual impact. The employee attends, gets tested and passes (or gets certified), and puts the courseware on the shelf until the next time. The information delivered through training typically is focused on a specific job skill or objective, and is delivered out of context in relation to the rest of the organization. Although many companies have used some of the better-known e-learning toolsets to help with training delivery over distance and archiving, this mostly impacts cost of delivery, not necessarily effectiveness.