Everyone knows how crucial having the right senior leadership and management team is to an organization’s health, success, and future.
Unfortunately, at many firms, executive leadership (CEO, BOD) fails to include a review of their senior leadership and management team (their single most important asset) annually as part of their strategic planning process.
If you believe that your senior leadership and management team play the leading role in your firm’s success, defining your culture and enabling future growth, then having an annual review would seem to be in order. What better time than at the time of your annual strategic planning process?
What are the chances of the firm meeting or exceeding its goals if there are deficiencies in management structure or leadership in finance, operations, technology or any other area? What areas of your firm are not important to achieving the company goals? Is there any area that does not affect another if the function or department needs a leadership upgrade?
As a major part of your management team’s responsibilities, building high-performing teams, managing change, building bench strength, succession planning and inspiring employee engagement are always critical aspects that senior executives are expected to carry out.
What’s the Risk If You Don’t?
For as much good as a great leader can do, an underperforming leader can be just as damaging to a company and its mission. As a company grows it is logical that some managers will have their ability to manage span of control and, as an expanding function, get ahead of their ability to out-perform on a regular basis.
It is common for firms to upgrade when it becomes obvious that a manager is struggling, but many times that occurs only when there is an operational break, a negative audit finding, or worse.
In order to catch potential deficiencies in senior leadership before there are real consequences for an organization, executive leadership should firmly establish a comprehensive review at a regular interval. Typically, annually is considered to be best practice because if your leadership review coincides with your overall annual strategic review process, you can then seamlessly add any new hires to your annual budget and planning timeline.
Once the review has been conducted, leadership is then best positioned to make as accurate an evaluation of their management structure as possible to identify whether they need to expand, collapse, maintain, or reorganize.
Without a regular, reliable means of reviewing your senior leadership, organizations can be inhibiting their potential and exposing themselves to an unnecessary amount of risk.
Huffman Associates
If you find you’re in need of building out or upgrading your senior leadership team, partner with the proven executive search consultants at Huffman Associates. Our team of veteran recruiters specializes in management and executive-level recruitment across multiple practice areas. Get in touch with us today to learn how our extensive network of proven candidates and 50 years of experience in search consultancy can help you overcome whatever hiring challenge your organization is facing.