Case Study: Developing the Leaders of Tomorrow

Produce a four pages report on NSW public sector commission discussing their approach to management and leadership development while highlighting the added value, this kind of approach brings to the success of organizations in general. In the next ten years, NSW expects a large number of retired managers by up to 75% from Department of Finance and Services. In 2008, NSW started preparing succession management to have a pool of managers and leaders for future changes. According to Berger & Berger succession management define as “the daily process of cultivating future talent through coaching, mentoring, feedback, counseling and development”.

NSW develop succession management planning for the sake of developing the present manager in the organization through daily process, coaching, personality assessment and 360 – degree feedback and other tools to assess the leaders. NSW focused on succession management in order to have capable leaders and managers to be ready to deploy those managers would retire in the next ten years. Succession management ensure an organization has the right management available today as well will take over the role of managers and leaders in the future.

It ensures the continuity of leadership, and to keep the blood continuing in the organization such as having new and developed mangers and leaders ready to replace those will retire. Therefore, NSW concerns about succession management in order to develop a pool of managers with specific capabilities and competencies ready to take over for a managers or executives within the organization. The succession management helps organizations measures the strength of their pool of talent and recognize where there gaps in the talent.

The NSW established Leader Development Program that focused on the skills and attributes managers need to lead effectively in the public sector of the future. The program is developed and builds on the NSW Executive Capabilities such as: Communication and interpersonal effectiveness, facilitating workforce effectiveness, achieving results, organizational context and environment astuteness, managing customer and stakeholder relationships, leadership, strategic thinking and planning, and change management (from EDP PowerPoint document).

The program provided to the development requirements of five different groups of leaders as follows: Aspiring managers, new managers, business managers, senior managers, and executives. To develop aspiring managers, a five –day program was implemented. The program involved personality –style feedback, which designed to improve self-awareness and overcome inner barriers to psychological growth and development leadership competencies. For instance, the inner feeling is limit inspiration, creativity and risk taking (Yukl,2013).

Therefore, before become a successful manager, it is important to re-join with one’s feelings, and challenge the hidden fears (Yukl, 2013). Also the program covered the role of manager, and skills requirements of management function. A personality- style assessment and 360-degree feedback tools program used for new and business managers. This helps the participants to increase their self –awareness. 360-degree feedback also called as multisource feedback is assumed that most leaders lack accurate knowledge about their skills and behavior, and the feedback can be used to improve it (Yukl, 2013).

The Managers obtain information about their skills or behavior from standardized surveys filled out by other people such as bosses, subordinates, and sometimes outsiders (Yukl, 2013). In NSW the program provide the manager with 360 – degree feedback from three key parties – people, business and leadership the modules take place over 10 months. Moreover, Coaching and mentoring sessions used to help the participants to interpret their experiences and learn new skills from their manager.

The benefit the participants will gain through learning from their managers’ experience is the amount of challenge in projects, the variety of tasks, and the feedback. For senior managers and executives, the aim was to build a constructive behavioral leadership. The participants received their personality and leadership behaviors from 360-degree questioners. The assessment focused to measure participants’ predominant orientation (people vs. task-orientation), and measures what behaviours are mostly adopted at work and in interaction with other employees (aggressive, passive or constructive behaviors).

The 360- degree feedback contains two profiles: self – image and how others evaluate or see you (Human Consulting, 2012). In NSW, a seven module were delivered over 12 months. After that, an independent external consultant clarified the results of each participant individually, to ensure the acceptance of the results in order to encourage change. Nowadays in its fifth year, NSW have 500 leaders and managers accomplished the program. Managers ready for planning and budgeting, staffing and organizing jobs and reporting relationships to efficiently implement plans, and monitoring and problem solving, beside other managerial skills.

On the other hand, there leaders who are ready for setting a direction and constructing a vision and strategies to provide attention for planning, highlighting communication, reliability, and empowerment and inspiring people and structure informal networks of relationships ( Bloisi, Cook, & Hunsker 2003). The assessment of Executive Development Program (EDP) illustrates that the Finance and Services group of managers were the top performers among the 500 leaders and managers.

The program focused on thirteen capabilities using eight tools to asses strengthens strategic leadership capability, develop the knowledge and skills required to deliver essential improvement, and motivate talented participants. Each participant commenced online and face-to-face assessment and got a confidential feedback to assist development and career planning. The assessment results ranked the leadership executive capabilities into strengthens and weaknesses categories. The four strongest capabilities are customer focus, complex dependencies, capacity to lead and manage people and organizational resilience.

These capabilities added value to the organizations approach. For example, having leaders who focused on customers and understand what clients and customers need and want, and what they think about the organization products and how to improve the services and products to satisfy the customers. This kind of leader develops a competitive strategy for the organization. At the same time, the results show that the executive management needs to be developed in the strategic financial management.

The main factors required development are: First, various choice of financial systems and budget management processes among and within the nine service group. The solution is merging and combining the financial system such as payment system, accounting and reporting in the state of funds received and spent and budget implementation process among and within the nine service group. The second weakness is the deficiency of clarity or consistency in the role of Chief Finance Officers and their finance team. To bridge this gap, the Finance Executive have to set a clear nd shared objective for Finance Department and drive an individual objective in order to work together to achieve departmental objectives. Third element need development plan is that the financial department does not play a vital role in the organizational decisions. In fact, the Financial Department consider as one of the major aspects for the organization. Therefore, it has to be taken into consideration when to make any kind of discussion related to the company. For example, if the company wants to maximize their profits the company has to grow business and to do that they need an income.

Accordingly, the company either takes loan or goes public by issuing shared and bonds in order to make decision regarding this they have to review the financial reports. The fourth and last gab in capabilities is the level of variances of delegation and accountability given to the line managers. In order to fill this gab, the management need to establish a clear delegation of Document of Authority–DOA which state all the financial procedures and identify the authority level for each of financial manager.

Than shared among the manager to clarify the level of authority each manager has. For example, for budgeting the project the financial manage has the authority to sign specific amount of budget (10,000$), in case the budget exceed the above mentioned amount then it has to go to the next level of authority and so on. In conclusion, develop succession management to prepare leaders and managers within the organization helps to invest in short – and long – term development of the employees.

Moreover, organization’s workforce exposed as much of the working environment as possible so that they gain a good understanding of what the company requires to remain successful. They are familiar with organization culture and value, knew how to deal with employees and what the customers need and want. At the same time, the organization benefit from leaders development that it has committed employees who understand organization’s strategy and management and ensure the continuity of leadership as well having backup plan of leaders and managers developed and trained to replace those managers will retire in the future.