Blueprint for Leadership Pipeline
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Introduction
Leadership is a value of the City of Durham. Our Values, the booklet that depicts the values and description of leadership put forth by our employees, opens by “recognizing that everyone is a leader.” Our value of leadership applies to any employee who takes the initiative and strives to improve the way we do things.
The Leadership Pipeline refers to the numerous ways we prepare employees to move into leadership responsibilities within our organization. As increasing numbers of leaders retire, our need for new leadership increases. We need a full pipeline of new leaders ready to meet the challenges we face. Leadership, in this blueprint, applies to all employees who seek to develop themselves; engage in improvements to services and processes; and move this organization forward. Frontline employees and administrative staff can be leaders. Directors, managers, and supervisors can be leaders. It is personal characteristics and actions, not titles or positions that determine leadership.
A Change in The Way We Do Things
The City of Durham, like many organizations, is changing the expectations it holds for employees and managers. Traditionally, managers told employees what to do and employees did what they were told. Different approaches are needed today: employees bring greater knowledge to the workplace, work is more complex, and expectations for quality and performance are higher. Today’s employees want to be more involved in determining how work gets done. As a result, managers and employees who partner and collectively determine goals, customer needs, processes, and improvement efforts are more successful. Employees are more satisfied. Creativity resulting from a diversity of opinions delivers better results. We need engaged, motivated employees – leaders at all levels of the organization—to help us move to even higher levels of citizen satisfaction.
How This Blueprint Came To Be
The third team attending the School for Applied Leadership (SAL) in 2006 accepted as their project, from City Manager Patrick Baker, a charge to help build the leadership pipeline for the City of Durham. The City Manager, along with other leaders, encourages professional development for current employees so they are prepared to compete for promotions within our organization. The City faces an increasing exodus of retirees in the near future as employees from the baby boom generation leave the workforce. A highly skilled workforce will position our organization to rapidly move employees into vacancies resulting from retirees departing. Opportunities for development and professional challenges are especially important to the generation currently entering the workplace. The leadership pipeline can help with recruitment and retention of talented employees.
The SAL team decided that the place to start was an outline of everything we need to be doing to supply leadership for our organization into the future. The next step was to create a blueprint, or plan, to show what is currently available and what needs to be added.
How to Use The Blueprint
We want the blueprint to be used in two ways
- to help employees connect with leadership development opportunities that are currently available, and
- to catalyze initiatives to fill in the gaps and create new opportunities
The blueprint is designed with hyperlinks to make it easy to use. Brief descriptions provide overviews and identify major components. Hyperlinks enable the user to click on the link and read more detail about programs that are of particular interest.
The blueprint is divided into major sections. A Description of each program is provided, followed by the Target audience and the typical Time frame for the program. The Format provides more description about how a class is taught or how a function is carried out. The Primary lead partner identifies who is currently responsible for this element of leadership development or who seems the most likely candidate to sponsor an initiative. What’s happening now and what’s needed gives an overview of efforts currently underway and identifies some of the missing pieces of the leadership pipeline. Each section concludes with contact information: For additional information and to contribute ideas and energy. This section also encourages employees to get involved in helping in building out or improve incomplete pieces of the pipeline.
Building Out The Pipeline
Parts of the pipeline are largely complete. Other components have been started, but need more work. Development of other sections has barely begun. This blueprint helps identify what is currently available. It also provides a framework to build upon. Action teams within the City (for example, Executive Leadership Institute and Management Academy) have historically taken on similar projects and can be expected to build and sponsor some of these components. This blueprint is expected to change as new approaches emerge and need to be added.
Employees are encouraged to lend their energy and talents to the effort to build this pipeline. The future of our organization and our City depends on a supply of fully engaged, high quality leaders.
Conclusion
There is much to be done to fully develop and implement the Blueprint for the Leadership Pipeline. Fortunately, the immediate and long term benefits of building the pipeline make the effort well worth the time and expense. In addition to the main product—a pipeline of leaders for current and future positions—likely by-products are more engaged employees, enhanced services and greater customer satisfaction.
The School for Applied Leadership team will make recommendations concerning development and implementation of this blueprint to the City Manager, Executive Team and Department Directors. We will pitch the ideas as projects for Management Academy and Executive Leadership Institute participants to take on. We also invite participation from employees at all levels of the organization through task teams, individual initiatives and other opportunities described in the document.