Hardly a week goes by without some 20 something grabbing the headlines (and subsequently people’s social media feeds) for doing something remarkable or amazing. Last week Amanda Gorman stole the show with her recital of the poem she had written for Joe Biden’s inauguration: The Hill We Climb. At 22, she is the youngest poet accorded the honour of delivering the presidential inaugural poem. If the papers are correct, Dr Jill Biden receives the credit for “spotting” her some years earlier at a recital in the spring of 2017 held at the Library of Congress.
And so last week was a stark reminder of not only what young talent can achieve, but the importance of spotting talent. The challenge for many business leaders today is not only about spotting them, but what you do with said high potentials once you’ve got them? I hear frequent grumbles from other CEO’s who bring in fresh new talent only to have them leave a couple of years later, having cost the business far more than they ever generated in revenue. And so I thought I would share some thoughts around my experiences of working with high potentials; what attracts them, what they want and when they leave.
What attracts them
“We want to work for a leader who is actively driving the business forward” is what one of our high potentials replied when I asked him why he joined us (from a large, well-known, prestigious brand).
When I joined BMW as a graduate in 2006, I had given precisely zero thought to the credentials of the CEO. I wouldn’t have dared. He was a grumpy Scot from what I remember and at no point did I look him up and down and think “yes, I think you’re up to the job”. But times have changed and so have mindsets. Whereas previously young entrants into the job market would show a certain deference to the CEO based on their job title, now that has changed. The generation joining our businesses today have grown up in a consumer world, where they are in the driving seat and so it’s entirely normal that they assess their new employer in the same way they would their friend’s Spotify playlist or local takeaway. Whereas previously CEO’s could stand behind the brand they represent, now what matters more is their own performance as assessed by someone who may only have been in the world of work for a few years, if not months!
Whether or not this is right or wrong misses the point, the fact is that for us to attract the best talent that is out there as CEO’s, we need to understand that our performance is under review by our teams. Glassdoor literally gives employees a chance to rate not only the business but also indicate their approval (or not) of the CEO. If we fail to meet the mark, expect an early exit for some, especially those with lofty ambitions.
What keeps them
“I’ve called this meeting, because I want to know how, in a few years’ time, I can be sitting on your side of the table”, one high potential said to me.
I smile reading this back as the context here is that I have a competent, experienced management team around me and the person having this conversation with me had been in the business for less than 12 months. That said, I appreciate ambition, and ambition is much more likely to be realised if it is articulated to people who can help make it happen! I remember well, at the early stages of my career, not getting roles because “you don’t have enough gravitas” or “I’m not sure he would have the right level of maturity for this role”. I’m pretty sure that these were both translations for you’re not old enough/you don’t look old enough. Either way, this experience has made me ever more determined to ensure that our business never makes such a facile assessment of promising candidates.
When I phoned my long term mentor at BMW to tell him the reason why I left, I said, “The thing is Ian, you became CEO when you were 33 and I’m 32 now and this might be the last opportunity to beat your record”. The reality was, this didn’t in fact have anything to do with my decision to take my first CEO job, but I rarely had an opportunity to score a point past my mentor and so felt this was the closest I could get to one.
My point scoring aside, the key thing is that we need to understand that some people do want to be CEO tomorrow, and that’s fine. Give them opportunities to do a role which they wouldn’t get in another firm and see what happens. If they are a good fit for the role, if they have a willingness to learn and take on feedback and will outwork others, there’s no reason why they, and the business, shouldn’t be really successful. To do this, you need to make room, though. If you don’t have the roles to fill, someone else will.
When they leave
“Jonny, I need to talk to you about something” one of our high potentials said to me last year.
And I knew. Because you know. Everyone knows when you get one of those calls. And on one hand, it’s disappointing. When you bring in one talent, you invest in them, and like any investment, you want to see your return pay back again and again. And this particular investment did pay back, but this time over a short time frame when we would have much preferred it to be longer.
But on the other hand, I was pleased to see him go. Because if someone’s heart isn’t in it, I wouldn’t want them to stick it out. Not for the money, not out of loyalty and not because they’ve been told its bad form to leave after X number of years. And surely it’s part of leadership, seeing others benefit from the investment that you’ve made? So often I see businesses only develop in those that they have predetermined (rightly or wrongly) to be lifers. There are so many issues with this, all of which I don’t have time to list now. But most importantly, we need to understand that investment in high potentials is similar to many investments across two axes; the size of the yield and the duration over which the yield is realised.
Today, we take on high potentials fully expecting that they will stay for a few years and then, if we can’t give them what they want, they’ll go. And that’s fine. If all of them go, we’re doing something wrong. If some of them go, out of our choice or theirs, that’s fine. It’s a big world out there.
As I hurtle from being a “young CEO” to just “a CEO” I hope that one day I will receive a call from one of our high potentials to say they’ve beaten my record by a year. When that happens, I’ll phone Ian so that he can console me…