Deep Bench

Deep Bench

We all know that it’s more expensive to obtain new customers than to keep current ones. Often, as well, current ones can be converted into more profitable customers through cross-selling or simply through more intelligent marketing based on information already on hand about them.

Similarly, it is almost always more effective to retain and develop current employees rather than to take them for granted while bounding after more glamorous-appearing candidates for top jobs from outside. In particular, hiring from outside for the top job, or for the heads of new initiatives, typically turns out poorly. Best is to put in such positions people who have a contextual understanding of the company, its culture and challenges, and the specific issues at hand - that is, your own people.

Moreover, it is important to develop broad skills and experience in your employees and managers. Teams dominated by a superstar may flare brightly for a while in both sports and business, but they breed discontent and frustration (not too far) under the surface, and fade quickly when the superstar burns out or seeks more lucrative opportunities elsewhere. Your top manager should be your team captain organizing the efforts of a strong and mutually reinforcing company of strong performers - not a dominating “talent” that is expected to carry the day alone, with inside employees relegated merely to holding his or her coat during the fight.

Whatever size your enterprise, you should have a training and development program for your employees and managers. Your pool of skilled and experienced staff should be so full that you lose well-trained employees to others, rather than trying to poach them from outside due to the dearth of them in your company resulting from your own inattention.

Bear in mind, as well, that training and development means little to your own firm if you don’t look within it first for key hires. Only hire from without to fill a set percentage of regular vacancies at various levels in order to avoid intellectual or cultural “in-breeding,” but retain key positions for the talent you develop from within - especially the top job or to head high-risk new initiatives.