Bootstrap Leadership Blog

If you work in a big company, it seems logical that Wall Street cares about your talent management practices.  Or do they?  According to a new study by DDI, 36 of 50 Wall Street analysts surveyed said they rarely, if ever, look beyond the succession plans for the CEO when evaluating the company’s prospects.  In other words, the CEO is the only executive that matters to them.  Given that performance requires the coordinated efforts of many leaders, it’s surprising how little Wall Street is paying attention to your broader leadership pipeline. 

I used to ask my CEOs this question: “if I could magically pull out x number of leaders from our company, how many would I have to remove before we’d feel real (significant) pain?”  Most of the CEOs I worked for loved this question – it got them thinking about specific people, and how much they really contributed to the success of the company.  Some would answer with a very small number – say 10 or 15.  One CEO told me: “If you removed them randomly, the number might be pretty high.  But if you picked the right CRITICAL leaders, I’d get pretty worried after about 5 or 6 names.”

That seems right to me.  Maybe Wall Street doesn’t need to know all you’re doing to develop a deep bench of leadership capability throughout the organization.   But it seems like they ought to take an interest in the entire senior team, and maybe the high potential top talent that’s being groomed for that team. 

If you’re responsible for talent management in your company, you probably should add this question to your list: “What are we doing to help the analysts that cover us know our top talent?”  If they don’t care about anyone beyond your CEO, perhaps you need to give them a reason to!  

There was a great article in the Harvard Business Review recently on millennials (people born between 1977 and 1997) and what they want from an employer and a manager.  In 2014, millennials will account for almost 50% of all employees in the world.  Think about that for a minute… pretty amazing, huh?   As the HBR article pointed out, in some companies they already constitute a majority.  As a people manager, are you ready for this wave?

Millennials are famous for wanting a constant stream of feedback, and for being in a hurry to have success.  They also view work as just a part of life, something to be balanced with the rest of their passions.  As a result, they place a lot of value on finding work that is fulfilling.  HBR polled 2,200 professionals across a wide range of industries to ask them about their values, their behavior at work, and what they want from their employers.  Here are some of the results:

What millennials want from their boss:   

•  Help me navigate my career path
•  Give me straight feedback
•  Mentor and coach me
•  Sponsor me for formal development programs
•  Be comfortable with flexible schedules

 What millennials want from their company: 

•  Develop my skills for the future
•  Demonstrate strong corporate values
•  Offer customizable options in my benefits/reward package
•  Allow me to blend work w/ the rest of my life
•  Offer a clear career path

 What millennials most want to learn: 

•  Technical skills in their area of expertise
•  Self-management and personal productivity
•  Leadership skills
•  Industry or functional knowledge
•  Creativity and innovation strategies

What do you make of these lists?  I think the first two look a bit different than they probably did 30 years ago… but that last one seems pretty timeless.  Maybe managing millennials isn’t that hard after all… I’m guessing the classic management tips still apply:     1) Get to know your people – find out what really motivates them; 2) provide lots of candid feedback about their performance; 3) challenge and stretch them; 4) engage them in the process – ask for their input, and 5) help them get exposure across the organization.

If you’re managing millennials, I’d love to hear from you – what’s it like?  Are you finding these survey results to be true?  Are they easier or more challenging to manage than other employees?  Pretty soon, millennials will be the workforce.  I wonder what that will mean for employers, and for the millennials themselves, when they become management?

Here’s some recent data on the concept of women leaving (and returning to) the workforce.  In the June edition of the Harvard Business Review, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Laura Sherbin and Diana Forster conducted a survey in 2009 using the same questionnaire they used in 2004 to examine the choices women make about their career paths.  Interestingly, the results of the two surveys were quite similar, despite one of the worst recessions in recent memory.

In 2004, in a robust economy, 37% of highly qualified (top performing) women said they were “offramping” – voluntarily leaving their jobs for extended time periods.  In 2009, the researchers found that, for the most part, off-ramps and on-ramps are here to stay; 31% said they had taken an off-ramp, and for those who did, they’re staying out of work longer – up to six months longer. 

In the 2009 survey, the researchers found that, of the 31% of women who had off-ramped, 40% re-entered the workforce in full-time jobs, 23% came back for part-time roles, and 7% became self-employed.  Perhaps most interesting, 30% had not returned at all to the workforce. 

The authors hypothesize that the nonlinear path is not a luxury for boom times, but the way many women want to structure their careers, regardless of the economy.  All of which left me wondering what these results might look like in another 5 years… of the choices, I’d bet on the self-employed number going higher and higher.  What do you think?