Planning for Leadership

Traditionally, business plans address factors such as market potential, advertising, finance, organizational structure, and other foundational issues that are essential for starting and maintaining a business. These are often the things that are easy to nail down, whether through data collection, or standard models, or just a simple decision about one option over another. But do they include specific plans for leadership?

If they don't, they should.

Leadership and human capital development are fuzzy topics, and it may be hard to decide early on how you want to address them. But as you look at how your firm will grow, you need to be thinking about how your leaders will grow, too. Whether you're looking at who's going to run your firm now, or who's going to run it 5 years from now, you need to be thinking about what kind of people you want to have doing that, and what skills they should possess.

I'll admit, I hadn't thought a lot about addressing leadership in your business plan until I saw something last week. A friend of mine in Singapore has a small graphic design company that, since he started it 3 years ago, hasn't quite worked out as he'd envisioned. During some talks we had last month while I was there, I sense he was at the point where a big breakthrough was about to move him forward. Things seemed to be coming together, he was gathering the motivation to kick it into gear, and I just hoped he'd carry through on the things we discussed.

Well, so far he is, and during the last 2 weeks he's shared with me his business plan that includes some of the new things happening now and that has some pretty specific plans for international expansion during the next 5 years. What intrigued me most was something he sent last week, which I've included below with some details changed:

2010 Singpore’s Management – CL
2010 US and Overall Management - JL
2011 Singapore’s Management – DY <-- CL Mentor
2011 Singapore and US Management – CL <-- JL Mentor
2011 New Zealand and Overall Management - JL
2012 Singapore management – FC <-- DY Mentor
2012 Singapore  and US Management – DY <-- CL Mentor
2012 Singapore, US and NZ Management – CL <-- JL Mentor
2012 UK and Overall Management – JL

Now, consider what he's done here:

- He's identified people to lead and manage now
- He's identified people to lead and manage later
- He's laid out the mentoring relationships to build the skills of future leaders
- He's accounted for his own continuing education and the education of others
- He's figured out who will lead the expanded effort before he expands

This is fantastic! What he's done is put leadership on the same level as everything else we consider important to a business. By paying attention to it now he's ensured that when he starts expanding he'll have the most important piece of the infrastructure -- the leadership -- in place. And he's got a plan for developing it, rather than just assuming it will be there.

He's already used this plan in one interesting way: he's talked to all these people about what he's doing, so now he'll actually do it...by telling them, he'll be accountable to them and they'll hold him to it, since he doesn't want to fail in front of them. That's pretty smart, because while we might be tempted sometimes to just give up, we're less likely to do it when someone's watching (a fact that occurred to me at about Mile 8 of a 10-mile race earlier this month...but that's a story for another time).

You can't just assume good leadership will exist for your business. You can't even assume YOU will be a good leader...you need to give it some thought, see what skills you need, and make sure you or the people you choose are ready. Give it as much consideration as you would give to any other piece of your business plan. Some things can be fixed if you get them wrong, but not having good leadership is a fast road to failure.