Rather than teaching young people how to be CEOs, it's better to start with the basics.
In the business world there are numerous examples of training people for roles that are way beyond their competency. Not only is it costing the country a fortune in actual training costs, but also in lost opportunity for our best and brightest.
Training that goes way beyond the role that a person will actually be undertaking is largely wasted. It may also do the person an injustice, as it will give them an expectation of a role which may never eventuate, leading to disillusionment. The training will not provide them with the skills that they need to do their job now, which if not done properly may disadvantage their elevation to a future management role.
Instead of training people to be leaders, maybe we should train them to be good followers first. Television's The Apprentice is a good example of too many leaders and not enough followers. The result is that a lot of talking gets done but very little work.
New Zealand, and most of the Western world, is punching out new MBAs at a fantastic rate, but is this type of training helpful or a hindrance? Is training young people to be CEOs, without them having any real experience, worthwhile or productive? Is it training them to do roles that they will never attain?
MBA graduates are being taught to be CEOs, by studying what a CEO does. The problem with this process is that CEOs do what they do more as a result of their experience than their theoretical prowess. You cannot short-cut the process. An analogy would be teaching a novice tennis player about the strategies that Roger Federer uses to beat Rafael Nadal. Surely we need to make sure they have the basics right first.
Once graduates hit the market, the bulk of them rarely end up as CEOs, and many do not even go into leadership roles. A great deal of what is learnt is wasted and gives the graduate a far greater expectation of their capabilities than they really have. What they need to learn is how to be a good follower and to be able to grow their minds with systems, processes and the experiences of failure and success that come with the territory.
My own experience was quite different. I ran large businesses as a CEO for many years and then went and did an MBA. I must admit that I found the content and the experience very rewarding, but I wondered whether my 20-year-old fellow students, who had no experience, even understood the material.
MBAs are just one example of how we are training at the wrong end of the curve.
Too often companies risk their future by falsely thinking that new people can be trained by more experienced staff. A good example is a well-known tool company that would send its new salespeople out with their most experienced and successful salesman. To the outside observer, it seems commonsensical to send your newest staff member out with the best salesperson you have. Surely they will pick up the business quickly and hopefully all of the best salesperson's skills will rub off. Great results will follow. The truth is quite different.
Unfortunately, the best salesman is not doing now what he did when he started. After years of visiting customers, servicing their needs, learning the products and gaining confidence, he is now reaping the benefits of this by getting many of his orders over the phone and via email. He is more like a delivery van than a salesman.
The new salesman, on seeing how the best salesman operates, may get the impression that the job is easy and that the business will just come to him. He certainly will not get any insights about how he needs to go about his role to get to where the best salesman is. The new salesman is likely to fail rather than be a success.
One of the most frequent comments I hear from business owners is the problem they have with handing their business over to their children. After 20 years of hard graft, the mother and father will have got the business to a stage where they are able to go into work a bit later, enjoy driving a nice car, have holidays and have enough cash to support their lifestyle.
Their children see this type of lifestyle as synonymous with running the business. They think that working in the family business comes with all the trappings of the parents. When the father suggests they start at the bottom to learn the business, they are less enthusiastic. It is another example of starters wanting to go direct to leadership and the accompanying benefits.
Large corporates who have internal leadership programmes are the closest to getting it right. Promising staff members are provided with training for their current role as well as leadership training to take them to a higher management role. While the process can take a bit longer it can provide good results.
If you are looking to train up staff to be your leaders of the future, treat it as a long- term project. Identify the right candidates early and plot a path for them to get new skills that they can use in their day-to-day roles. That is the only way that they turn knowledge into experience.
There is no shortcut to leadership. Training programmes should be appropriate for the person and their experience and we need to start with getting the basics right.
The application of the knowledge is as important as the knowledge itself. Trial and error, success and failure, plaudits and criticism - all are part of the training continuum - and if done right we will turn out fantastic leaders of the future.
Craig McIvor is the managing director of Corporate Management Advice which assists businesses with growth strategies
managementadvice.org
