Invest in Your Firm's Future Leaders

Source: AICPA CPA Insider

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Jennifer Wilson.

With over 76 million baby boomers set to retire over the next 12-plus years, the need to develop successors looms.

Here are five easy strategies for developing yours.

1. Talk to them. Share your thoughts on your up-and-comers' strengths and areas in which they can grow and improve openly. Find out what up-and-comers want most from their careers and discuss ideas you have for how their careers might develop.
2. Be transparent with them. Invite your up-and-comers to your shareholder or leadership team meetings. Begin sharing important strategy decisions and difficult challenges openly. Encourage them to take part in management discussions. Share financial information with them. Teach them your firm's practice economics, expose them to benchmarking studies and invite their observations.
3. Send them away. Invest in an up-and-coming leadership development program designed for potential successors. Have them attend a program in which they will meet up-and-comers from other firms so they can begin developing their network of connections on which to rely for best practices and information exchange.
4. Make them your shadow. Invite your staff to come along on prospect and referral source meetings, attend networking functions as your “wing person,” sit in on staff development discussions and ride along to higher level client meetings to learn your approach to these important leadership activities.
5. Delegate to them. Delegate plum assignments, transition key clients and engagements, and relinquish important internal tasks to honor your up-and-comers. There is no higher compliment that you can give your younger staff than trusting them with important work and no faster way to develop them than challenging them with work that will stretch their skills.

For the complete article, read “Ensure Your Up-And-Comers Are Ready to Lead.”

From AICPA CPA Insider, October 24, 2011, http://www.CPA2biz.com.