Do You Promote From Within?

Does This Noble Practice have Some Hidden Pitfalls?

Most organizations are proud of their practice of promoting their own employees.

• It fosters your organization’s values and culture.
• It provides opportunities for professional growth and advancement vital to retaining an engaged workforce.

The Pitfalls

Without proper precautions, promotion from within can be perilous.  How?  Well intentioned organizations take their super producers and promote them to super-visors without providing the new skills needed to succeed at the new position. The super producers who have mastered the technical aspects of their job suddenly need to utilize unrefined soft skills in their new management position.  Skills like communication, motivation, delegation, time management and decision making are critical to success. Where do newly promoted supervisors acquire these skills?  They’re super technicians! We assume they will be super managers?  Is this a valid assumption?  What if it’s not?

A Familiar Example

How many times have you seen a top performing sales person fail when promoted to sales manager? What happens when this occurs?

• The skills needed to succeed as a manager differ from those of a sales producer.
• The previously super sales person struggles in his / her new role managing previous peers.
• Sales force productivity and morale drops.
• The promoted manager is either terminated or returns to the field either in disgrace or for a competitor.

What does this episode cost a company in lost sales and productivity? Is the same practice repeated in other departments with similar results?

Management Dilemma

Do you reprimand, demote or even terminate your former rising star?

Your Promotion Insurance Policy

Establishing programs to assure that your promotions are successful can avoid costly promotion failures and positively impact the bottom line by improving the effectiveness of your management talent. Here are some possible measures:

• Utilize Job Benchmarking.  This allows you to understand the real requirements for the job.
• Utilize Talent Assessments to determine the potential gaps between the job requirements and the promoted person. This will help to discover potential traps for the promoted star
• Create a customized leadership coaching and development to close the gaps in skills and avoid the potential traps.

How Might I Help?

We invite you to contact us to discuss how these tools can help assure promotion success.