Best Companies for Leadership (Development)
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Every year, Hay Group, a global consulting firm, publishes a list of the "Best Companies for Leadership." For the first time, this year the firm's partner is Business Week, where there are several articles about the survey.
This year, several bloggers published posts about the study. Here are the three most helpful posts, followed by some of my own opinions.
From Great Leadership: Bloomberg BusinessWeek.com/Hay Group Study Identifies Best Companies for Leadership
"I don’t know about you, but I like these annual awards. The cynics might say they’re a lot of PR and questionable criteria or methods. I’ve found them to be pretty accurate. Based on the networking I do, it seems like the ones that really have their act together around leadership development are consistently on these lists."
Wally's Comment: Dan McCarthy is my go-to guy for all things leadership development. When you read Dan, you get the benefit of a career's-worth of experience, passion, and hard work. So when he says that the companies on this list have their act together, I listen. Dan's opening comments are followed by the full text of the news release announcing the study.
From Bret Simmons: Best Companies for Leadership Study
"A few weeks ago, Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.com released the Best Companies for Leadership Study and Top 20 list. I got a chance to ask John B. Larrere of Hay Group some questions about the study. John is National Practice Leader for the Leadership and Talent practice of Hay Group. He works primarily with Executives and Executive Teams. He has a particular interest in international executive leadership."
Wally's Comment: Bret Simmons is a tenured faculty member at the University of Nevada, Reno. This post is worth your time because Bret asks a series of questions about the study and how it was put together. They'll help you evaluate the findings and possible uses.
From Weekly Leader: Weekly Leader Episode 42 – Hay Group/BusinessWeek Leadership Study
"This week Peter speaks with John Larrere, National Practice Leader for Leadership and Talent, The Hay Group about their collaborative leadership research project with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, listener comment on Undercover Boss, Dan Heath’s Fast Company video on mission statements and podsafe music by Tom Waits."
Wally's Comment: Peter Mello of Weekly Leader also interviews John Larrere of Hay Group. It's a good interview and it's on the Weekly Leader podcast. That means you can listen to the interview while you do something else, walking the dog in my case.
This study is always interesting, but there are two things to be aware of.
Forget the title, this is a study of the best companies for leadership development, not the best companies for leadership. Survey questions were about "leadership-development practices."
The list is very volatile from year to year. The 2009 list has only 12 companies that were also in the top 20 in 2008. Neither Wal-Mart (6) nor Nestle (7) were on the list in either of the two prior years. HSBC was ranked fifth on the 2008 list and doesn't appear on the 2009 list. One more example. Johnson and Johnson was number 3 in 2007, but nowhere to be found in 2008 or 2009.
Boss's Bottom Line
Save discussion of relative rankings for your off-duty time. Consider this is a list of some of the companies who do a great job of leadership development and try to find something you can learn from each of them.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Categories: leadership development
Tags: Leadership Development
Hi Wally,
Great post! Leadership development and style are critical for business. Although, I found the metrics somewhat difficult to quantify (in regard to which businesses were picked as "Best Companies for Leadership"). I was especially surprised to see WalMart on the list. Knowing that most employees earn substandard wages despite billion dollar earnings, I find it difficult to fathom them on such a list. However, if the leadership qualities are about the bottom line (rather than consumer and employee experience), then I would probably nominate them myself!
I appreciate your thoughtful blogs and tweets.
Respectfully,
Jen
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Thanks for commenting, Jen. I'm not surprised about Wal-Mart at all, except for the fact that the prevailing wisdom is that they are an awful and exploitive employer. That can make a good discussion, but it's worth noting that Wal-Mart employees in locations all over the place have consistently voted down union representation that would supposedly better their lot. What do they know that the critics don't?
Of course, that has nothing to do with leadership development, per se, which is what Hay Group was concerned with. There, Wal-Mart, like most large corporations has two tiers of "leadership."
There is corporate leadership which is primarily college educated and mostly hired for white-collar positions of one kind or another. At that level, they have done effective CEO succession and have good bench strength.
There is also the level of leadership from first-line supervisors up to store managers. Wal-Mart does better at offering opportunities for people to move up in that range than just about any corporation that I've studied.
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Thanks for citing Weekly Leader.
These types of studies always seem to have a bit of fluff. But in the end, they can help identify some broader trends. It was good to hear that the Hay Group saw a shift from execution to more forward looking strategy.
Pam and I appreciate you being a regular listener and supporter of the Weekly Leader podcast and we're big fans of what you do here at Three Star Leadership. Keep up the great work!
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I agree, Peter. But those "trends" can be tricky. Often the list of things to evaluate varies from one survey to the next. And the Zeitgeist is always hard at work. A person who has just read a flurry of articles in the business press about strategy is more likely to rate strategy highly than the same person after a similar flurry of articles on execution.
As with all surveys, the decisions about who you ask, how you word your questions and what's happening in the and their world when they answer the questions have big-time impact on the results.
These surveys are great if you use them to sharpen your thinking or to help determine which issues are important for you. They're dangerous if you think the survey provides an answer.
Thanks for adding your voice to the conversation.
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Wally - I'm a big fan of your blog and you have some great insights here as usual. I completely agree with your point about learning from the big boys (or girls as the case may be) but they are have huge resource pools with which to develop global leadership strategies. What's a smaller organization to do? I'm working on a plan for mid sized companies and would love to know what resources you would recommend to 100-1000 person organizations as they approach the challenge of leadership development and succession planning.
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Thanks for those kind words and adding your question to the conversation. Here are two resources that may help.
One is a recent post of mine titled: "Leadership Development: Big Company Programs and You." It's specifically about adapting material from publications like the Hay study and books such as The Leadership Pipeline.
Dan McCarthy has a post titled "Leadership Development for 'The Little Guys'" on his Great Leadership Blog. He concentrates on the different opportunities that smaller companies offer.
That should get you started. Other readers may have suggestions to add.
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A short note about Walmart from an outside observer - Walmart has demonstrated something that few other companies do (though most companies claim to have this policy).
Walmart is an equal opportunity employer - if you go to their stores you'll see young people, middle-aged people and people of advanced ages - all mixed together in one store.
Also, I know they hire people who immigrate to the country and can't find find jobs because these immigrants don't have local experience - Walmart provides them with that kind of reference.
Internatlly, they promote based on factors other than having an MBA or some sort of other such advanced degree - they advance people who work hard and prove their hands-on capabilities and understanding of the business - it shows on the store floor! Instead of analytics, managers depend on "out of the wood panelled offices" and onto the floor management. Nowhere else do I see managers on the floor except at Walmart!
Good old-fashioned hands-on management wins the day at Walmart. Management is not perfect but it's a whole lot better than most places. I have never worked at Walmart - I've known people who worked there and not everybody is fan but they are all grateful for a job when no one else would give them one!
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Thanks for adding to the conversation. There's a lot to be said for the opportunity that Wal-Mart offers to people who had a hard time finding it elsewhere.
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"Consider this is a list of some of the companies who do a great job of leadership development" is exactly right. Ranking such companies I find silly but providing a list of companies that do some good things is useful and interesting.
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Thanks, John. I suspect the rankings are to get companies to participate and to make for good headlines that draw readers, recognition, advertising revenue, and clients.
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