Would it not be great if there were signs your employees wore on their heads that helped identify what they would be great at? You can walk through your cubicle farm and see who would be best at managing, sales, customer relations, negotiation, etc. It would make some of the problems a company experiences disappear and others minimal at their worst.
Well you cannot have the signs, but you can have something that will keep your organization staffed correctly: a plan.
Out With The Old Method
Have A Plan For Your Leadership
You know the old method and how it turns out. People who are excellent at demonstrating their skills in their chosen career paths are promoted to the next level. Unfortunately they fail at that next level. The example that most people know is that of the stellar salesperson who gets promoted to sales manager. The skills they have demonstrated in the field – meaning an excellent record at closing sales – do not translate into the leadership needed to coach/manage a team of salespeople. This is the same for the best researcher, human resources interviewer, and/or quality engineer.
Why does this old method happen? Companies like to reward effort and merit. They should. It is in the American work ethic that hard work and toil are we rewarded. A meritocracy at its best is what a company represents. The next logical step is management. Or is it?
Create Multiple Paths For Promotion
What if your company rewarded increased challenges and responsibilities without promoting a stellar performer into management? What if you built a new promotion plan that identified leaders early and groomed them while keeping the most successful people where they excel at in their current roles? What if you rewarded merit differently?
The answer is that you can and your company will be successful at it. The first thing you must do is to be resolved to break the current cycle: performance-based promotion to management. Yes, it works, but it also comes with a slew of headaches/heartaches when it fails. Which is a large portion of the time. Instead you should have performance-based promotion into increased challenges for the current role.
This new method means that you must have a promotion plan. Take a star salesperson; this person exceeds the quota day in and day out. In a typical company they would be promoted to a management position. They typically fail because they enjoy being in contact with the customer and closing the sale. Beside your company is removing a major channel of revenue from the field. Instead this stellar salesperson can be given numerous incentives to stay in the field – bigger commission, increased perks, or larger territories – producing for the company. You share the promotion path with everyone so that they know their merit is rewarded beyond just management.
At the same time you start to identify early on those individuals who fit best into management. From their first day on the job you can test and track your employees to see who fits best in management. Yes there is a performance component and most leaders demonstrate their leadership through their actions. They also possess emotional intelligence, situational awareness, and a desire to coach others for improved performance. They have a desire to lead. These individuals should be tracked, challenged, and based on their merit promoted into management positions.
Case Study
A company that has broken the “Promote Star Performers” mentality to career advancement is Stryker. This medical device manufacturer learned a while back that star performers do not translate to being excellent/start managers. In fact they tend to fail in that position and wreck not only their careers but others as well. Stryker set out to promote differently.
Stryker created incentives and other paths for promotion to keep their star performers engaged. Management was no longer the only path to increased pay/responsibilities; instead it was one of many to choose from. Stryker also tests those individuals identified early to be on the management track. These individuals are tested to see if they have the right stuff to be managers. Being a stellar performer is not enough to get you promoted to manager, you have to be able to lead.
The result for Stryker has been amazing. Their stellar performers stay in the field strengthening their relationships and bringing much needed revenue into the company. These individuals are challenged and desire to stay in their roles. Meanwhile those that are promoted to management have been rigorously screened and set up for success in their new roles. These individuals have what it takes to lead their teams resulting in a low turnover rate.
Your Choice
Take a look at where your company is now. How does it promote people and how often do those promotions work out? What is really in the best interest for your company: promoting star performers or keeping them where they are the best benefit for your business?
These are tough decisions and the easiest thing to do is stick with the status quo. Breaking from the latter, though, will set your company up for the best possibilities of success.
