Executive Interviews: Interview with Jeffrey M Cohn on Talent Management
February 2007 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Jeffrey M Cohn
Director of Research at Chief Executive Leadership Institute (now at Yale);
Director at the Law & Economics Consulting Group.

Right now its a very reactive process. Companies wait until a position becomes vacant, then word of that vacancy slowly trickles down to the HR department, then the HR department creates a position description for the job that needs to be filled, then finally, the company begins an external search. Executive recruiters may be brought into the process. But frankly, by this time, the company is already behind the 8 Ball. Had they been more proactive, the company would have had several external (and internal) candidates lined up well before the position became vacant. And again, external partners can help companies become more proactive. A firm called Talent Intelligence, for example, helps clients proactively identify key talent in other firms that could immediately add value if successfully recruited. Thats obviously an invaluable service in todays talent driven economy.

• We always hear of succession planning only at the top. Why not at the middle and first level management? Why do you think the boards, the business press, academic research and consultants too concentrate (seemingly at least) only on that one chair? After all you find the need for talent at all the levels. Do you think, therefore, its more of an orchestrated celebration rather than a shared celebration?
  This is a good question to end on, because the news is encouraging. Boards are slowly but surely starting to better embrace their rising stars. They are making more of a conscientious effort to meet high performing managers and rising stars earlier in their careers. Martin McGuinn, the former CEO of Mellon Financial, used to regularly invite rising stars to Board meetings to give presentations. And CEOs should ensure that succession planning and leadership development is embedded into the very fabric of the organizations culture. Every manager, at all levels, needs to think about how he or she can improve the skills of his or her direct reports and ultimately promote them into new, more demanding positions. This is true in organizations of all shapes and sizes. It was true at Tyson Foods and at Mellon, both Fortune 500 companies, and its equally true in smaller to mid-size firms. More and more I am even seeing prescient start up companies spend time thinking about succession planning, before the company scales in size and complexity. Taking a company from $0 to $50 mn in revenues, after all, is a far different challenge and requires far different leadership skills than scaling from $50 to $250 mn. Savvy venture capitalists like Kleiner Perkins help their portfolio companies think about these kinds of issues far in advance. Thats clearly a big reason for the success of their portfolio companies.

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