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Introduction
Experience
of a Different Kind:
All managers, especially top managers, urgently need a new kind of
experience. What
yesterday’s experience has taught them cannot be counted on to help
them cope with tomorrow’s problems and opportunities.
Nor can they rely on today’s experience to teach them how to
improve their performance on the job or how to advance up the
managerial ladder. They
simply can no longer depend on their own experience to teach them what
they need to know to succeed in our rapidly changing and increasingly
competitive world economy.
The
crisis facing all managers can be seen in the plight of those who
aspire to positions at the top of the organizational pyramid. Their development problems are revealed by two disturbing
trends. The first is
rising failure rates among new general managers; the second is the
growing practice among American companies to go outside their own
ranks to recruit general managers and chief executive officers.
Failure rates among new general managers have been increasing
since the late 1960s, as fewer and fewer of them have been able to
learn from their experience how to perform their jobs effectively.
And as more and more companies have discovered that their top
management candidates have not developed the competence required to
manage their business enterprises, they have been forced increasingly
to recruit outsiders for key management positions.
These
trends are a growing threat to the careers of top management
candidates. They reveal, moreover, that a declining number of
companies are developing the key managers they need for their own
survival. Increasingly,
they are counting on their competitors and others to develop the
managers they need to assure their success in domestic and world
markets.
Failure
to develop top managers should be of deep concern to our business
leaders because it is a uniquely American phenomenon.
Our world competitors do not recruit outsiders for top
management. They develop
their own. Indeed, German
and Japanese companies strongly believe that their management and
employee training programs are giving them a competitive edge in world
markets and are keeping them “ahead of the competition.”
High
Failure Rates: Research I have conducted in a number of large U.S. Companies
show that failure rates among new managers at both the bottom and top
of the organizational pyramid often exceed 25 percent during their
first three years. High
failure rates among first-level managers may not be surprising because
it has long been recognized that successful “individual
contributors” often find it difficult to make the transition from
“doing” to managing”. But
high failure rates among general managers are another matter.
These managers were promoted into top management because they
had the highest potential of all the managers in their organizations.
Yet failure rates among them in many companies are now as high
as they are among inexperienced, first level managers.
As H. Edward Wrapp, a director of several corporations and a
former professor at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of
Business has pointed out: “The
turnover of general managers in some companies is little short of
criminal.”
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Introduction
Recruiting
Outsiders
for Top
Management
Why
General
Managers
Fail
Lessons
for
CEOs and
Boards of
Directors
A
Breakthrough
In
Management
Development
Significance
Of The
Accelerated
Experience
Method™
Conclusion
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