Chief Learning Officer - September 2007 - (Page 31)

sion planning, I had participated in assessments and in executive coaching sessions,” Stoufer said. “Therefore, I knew most of our top talent pretty well, both from a personal standpoint, as well as from the data and assessments. The new executive team relied very heavily on that input in the first months of the transition.” Further, Stoufer said competency assessments at the managerial level also can inform and influence leadership training, making sure it is targeted at the right development needs and helping to move the company in the direction the new CEO wants. “Without that specificity of knowing where your leadership strengths are and where the gaps are, and then filling gaps in ways helpful to the new business, leadership training becomes merely an event held for its own sake,” Stoufer said. “A learning executive can really help give a new CEO a valuable perspective on the organization’s talent — what are our strengths from a leadership perspective, and are those the strengths we need going forward? Those are the kinds of things that CEOs need to know.” An organization that has a good sense of where its strengths and deficiencies are will have an easier time managing its way through a CEO transition. By knowing which change levers to hit (and how hard to hit them), companies can invest more wisely and reap results more quickly. Yaarit Silverstone is managing director of organization and change management at Accenture. Neil Lawson is an outsourcing specialist working within Accenture’s Learning BPO practice. Craig Mindrum, Ph.D., is a visiting research fellow with Accenture’s Learning BPO practice. They can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. Rigor Around the Right Levers Whether a CEO transition represents major upheaval for a company, or it just marks the inevitable march of time, it is a period of change — but not unique change. A shift in management shares characteristics with any major organizational change program. Therefore, companies should set out to capture and apply the best thinking from change management that has been developed over the past couple of decades. For example, one of the differences between change management today versus 10 years ago is the increased sophistication of metrics and tools. Technology-based tools can help executives, along with their HR and learning leaders, assess their organizational capacity and measure the progress of a change program. In the case of C-level changes, tools can collect information from an organization at various phases in the transition and measure it against benchmarks so executive leaders can see whether they are on track to achieve high performance. T h i s c a n b e f i g u r e d o u t. How long will it take? No one knows for sure, but we know it will happen. And we know that we need leaders - creative leaders - to make it happen. The kind of leaders who can think and act beyond current issues and obstacles to find new solutions. We believe the world needs more of these creative leaders. If you would like to know more about how creative leadership can help those in your organization solve their own challenges, visit t h i n k a n d a c t b e y o n d . c o m . http://thinkandactbeyond.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - September 2007

Editor's Letter Contents Letters to the Editor Strategies Selling up, Selling Down Take Five Imperatives Guest Editorial Learning Solutions Embarking on a Learning Journey Clo Profile Environment CIGNA Service Operations: Making Strategic Change Happen, and Making It Stick Tactics Black & Decker: On-Demand Learning Creation and Consumption Productivity The Army You Have Human Capital Holiday Inn Express: Delivering Critical Training Globally Case Study: Tegan Jones Business Intelligence Case Study: Lisa Rummler Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - September 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.