You're Already Building Leaders. You're Just Not Building a System.
McKinsey argues a CEO's most important job right now isn't strategy — it's building a deliberate, personally-owned system for developing the next generation of leaders, rather than something handed off to HR or left to happen by accident.
Prompted by “You're Already Building Leaders. You're Just Not Building a System.”, McKinsey (Sternfels, Pacthod & Berger).
McKinsey's latest argues the CEO's most important job right now isn't strategy — it's building what they call a "leadership factory," a deliberate, hands-on system for developing the next generation, personally owned by the CEO, not handed off to HR. Their reasoning: the next crisis, whatever it turns out to be, is coming whether you're ready or not, and the only real defense is having people under you who can actually lead through it.
Most of the companies I work with don't have an HR department building anything, let alone a factory. But here's what I've noticed: you're already doing half of this without a name for it.
You know exactly who your best young people are, because there's no layer of management standing between you and them. You've already thrown someone into a role they weren't fully ready for because you had no other choice, and watched them either rise to it or not. That's a field promotion. McKinsey just put a label on it.
What's actually missing, then?
What almost nobody does on purpose is turn that into a system — where developing the next leader is a stated job requirement for every leader you already have, not something that only happens by accident when somebody quits.
A few of the best-run companies out there hold every leader personally responsible for teaching what they know to whoever's coming up behind them. Most small companies never write that expectation down anywhere. It's just hoped for.
Here's a challenge for your next leadership meeting: go around the room and have every leader name, out loud, the one person they're actively developing to eventually do their own job. If more than one person can't answer, that's not a hiring problem — that's your whole business sitting on one person's shoulders longer than it should.
Building that system deliberately, rather than by accident, is a lot of what Team Coaching is for.
Originally posted on LinkedIn ↗