“The most important decisions that businesspeople make are not what decisions, but who decisions.” - Jim Collins, “Good to Great”
In the entire Charlie Sheen saga that has been playing out over the past several weeks we really are seeing what can go wrong with mismanagement of top talent who make the company a lot of money.
· Business - the competence and number of employees ready to fill (temporarily or permanently) vacant leadership and other positions. Example - Building an organization's bench strength through management training and stretch assignments.
This article caught my eye because of the obvious ability of the Chargers’ coaches who were working so well with their talent. Proper leveraging of talent will make or break individuals, teams, coaches, and franchises. So why would this particular team do so well when others don’t?
One striking philosophical difference is that the Chargers seem to take a full-season approach to winning in December while other teams appear to be uni-dimensional and reactive to winning single games. For example:
Chargers:
· plan for keeping star players healthy
· continuously making sure newer players are well versed in critical plays
· challenge newer players during the season while resting star players – even when it isn’t necessary
Other Teams
· over-rely on the key players remaining healthy going into the final month
· ratchet up the play book and come up with new plays to confuse the other team
· restrict the play book so less pressure on newer players
The difference? Succession planning. While other teams are hoping for health and searching for the best wrench to throw at the competition, the Chargers always remain focused on overall talent development.
Now I have even more reason to watch the Chargers. They are my poster team for Strategic Talent Management.
What are the downsides?
The question then becomes: What are the costs to this approach? Why don’t other teams and organizations do it?
There can be a short term cost to this approach. As mentioned in the article the Chargers don’t win every game, especially at the beginning of the season. Top leadership has to be comfortable with not always having the best player complete every play. When any organization builds their next generation of leaders a few balls may get dropped, but the payoff is having the strong bench of talent for the long term. Nobody said talent development and succession planning would be easy, but they are critical to actually winning “in December.”
Now where is that remote control…
