When you examine your leadership bench, do you see gaps? Of course you do… A follow up question is, what kind of gaps do you see?
Skill gaps. These are easy to fix via training, e.g. Calculate ROI of a business proposal.
Knowledge gaps. This takes a little more time, but can be done, e.g. Knowledge of the federal and state regulations.
Knowing your customer. This is expensive to acquire on the job, but there is no other or better way.
Knowing your business. This takes a lot of elbow grease and is (l)earned in the school of hard knocks. Strategic insight is available only to those who know what it takes to meet customer expectations, and have actually done it.
This analysis will inform your hiring practices. Sometimes you have to hire for the short term, but that will come back to bite you if you do not have an idea of how your new hire will help you plug gaps in your leadership bench in the long term.
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