ADVERTISEMENT

Is Your Future Leadership Pipeline Good Enough? 

Published: July 25, 2024
Borin / stock.adobe.com

How would you rate your company’s leadership succession planning? If you’re like most integration companies, there is room for improvement. 

Our integration industry is lucky to have many companies that boast tried-and-true leaders, but NSCA often hears from companies that don’t feel as though they have their next-generation leadership primed and ready to lead. That’s a problem. 

NSCA, Commercial Integrator and Security Sales & Integration recently polled a segmented group of relatively young integration industry professionals to learn their thoughts about next-generation leadership. The findings were discussed during a recent NSCA Business Series webinar with CI, entitled “What Do Next-Generation Integration Leaders Need?” That webinar is archived on CommercialIntegrator.com. 

Let’s look at some findings: 

  • A whopping 76% of those surveyed believe that their organization has capable future company leaders currently on their team. 
  • However, that pipeline of future leaders isn’t necessarily robust; only 41% say it’s very or somewhat strong. 
  • In terms of how forthcoming current leadership is about succession planning, a good percentage, 58%, say they’re at least sometimes privy to conversations about future leadership. 
  • Very few are confident that their future leaders are getting the training they need, with 18% saying they’re “not at all” confident and 68% indicating they’re “somewhat” confident.  
  • Many of these young integration industry professionals perceive a generation gap between themselves and existing leadership that makes any leadership planning difficult. Nearly 40% say that gap is “particularly significant in the integration industry,” and only 21% say that it’s not a significant factor. 

Planning for Succession Planning 

This is not just about executive leadership, such as CEOs and presidents. It’s about preparing your talented team members to progress into manager-, director- and any C-suite roles. It’s about ensuring that your integration company continually boosts its ability to lead all segments of the business. 

Strong leadership helps integration companies be innovative, nimble, relevant and profitable. It also helps to create a strong company culture that fosters loyal team members. It’s a formula for improving retention and keeping your A-players.  

After the NSCA/CI webinar, NSCA conducted a follow-up webinar offering tips on succession planning for integration company leaders and next-generation leaders. Panelists emphasized that an impactful succession strategy is a long-term plan, including many elements: 

  • Identifying leadership roles and tasks. We all create job descriptions for team members. But many integration company leaders haven’t taken the time to truly document what they do and what future leaders will need to accomplish. This is an important step not just for the leader at the helm but also for all director and leadership positions. 
  • What do you look for in a leader? This is about understanding needs. What skills are important to run or help lead your particular integration company? Do you have unique needs, such as training in a particular area? Are you tasked with preparing family members to lead? Are you realizing that you need to look externally for future leaders?  
  • How do you assess candidates for future leadership? This is an important step in helping to avoid investing time and training in somebody who won’t be an ideal leader. It’s vital to learn how to identify where candidates have strength and where they have capability gaps. It’s also important to recognize the difference between team members who are high performers versus those who boast high potential. High performance doesn’t always equate to being a good leader. 

The webinar discussed leveraged expertise from an NSCA Business Accelerator in the human resources space, Insperity, and featured input from integrators whose businesses are going through these processes. 

As a trade association, NSCA is extremely focused on next-generation leadership. The gap between typical member companies’ established leadership and those who can potentially lead in the future is a significant business challenge. The data from the NSCA/CI/SSI survey zeroes in on what’s important to next-generation leaders and what they believe they need in terms of training to be successful. 

Both of these webinars are great precursors to NSCA’s new conference aimed at our industry’s rising stars and next-generation leaders: XBO Experience. It’s scheduled for November 12 to 13 in Atlanta. 


Tom LeBlanc is executive director at NSCA. To learn about becoming an NSCA member, visit NSCA.org. 

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
B2B Marketing Exchange
B2B Marketing Exchange East