Can You Measure Leadership?

摘要

Companies today live under the relentless glare of metrics. Quarterly earnings releases, sales projections, quality and compliance audits, even employee surveys are used to gauge the enterprise's health. Nevertheless, few such measures directly answer a key question that is frequently on the minds of the senior team: Do we have enough leaders, and the right leaders, to run our business both today and in the future? Many CEOs cite the lack of qualified leadership talent as the most significant constraint on growth. This is happening as the pool of potential leaders shrinks before our eyes; the number of 35- to 44-year-olds in the work force, the so-called "key leader age," will drop by 15% over the next decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thus the pressure on company decision makers to rethink their leadership development strategies is greater than ever.