How do you develop people?
Borrow One Idea: Train Your Replacement
In 2011, a consulting team began work with a consumer goods company. The team needed a lot of manufacturing and logistics data, which meant they needed to talk to Dale. He was the master of supply chain data at the company. “The systems are complicated and he’s the only one who can really do a good job getting data,” said the COO. “You need to talk to Dale because he won’t teach anyone else how to successfully pull data out of our old systems,” said another manager.
Finding Dale’s desk, within a cube at the center of a warren of high walled cubicles, to ask for data, was a regular pilgrimage. Until the project was done and Dale faded in the memory of the consulting team.
Between 2011 and 2024, the consumer goods company changed hands a number of times, moved headquarters, and greatly expanded its portfolio. The data Dale controlled was still important but was now a portion of much larger data needs. Yet he remained, indispensable, in his own way, for thirteen years…
In 2024, a consulting team began work with the same consumer goods company. The team included one member who had been part of the 2011 team. The team needed a lot of manufacturing and logistics data, which meant they needed to talk to Dale. “The systems are complicated and I’m the only one who can really do a good job getting data,” said Dale.
Dale’s desk was now in an office with windows. The office building at which he worked, designed to hold hundreds, now only had a dozen of full-time employees, its existence owing entirely to its physical connection to a critical warehouse. The cubicles were mostly removed, the large empty space that remained was used for the orientation training of hourly workers at nearby manufacturing plants.
Dale had a better title in 2024. Presumably his comp increased over time. The entire company had moved on, strategically and physically, but his job was exactly the same.
Company supply chain leaders begrudgingly acknowledged that Dale was still needed, that the more narrow set of data he controlled was necessary. For the time being.
I very much hope this is the career Dale wanted, for his own sake, though I do not know (I did not ask).
What I do know is that Dale never taught anyone anything (I did ask, and was told he purposefully would not explain how he was extracting and successfully stitching together the vast quantities of data from the backend of their IT systems).
By jealously guarding his territory, Dale made himself temporarily indispensable and eventually vulnerable (a new CIO finally did what the five preceding leaders should have done and had a tool built to automate the data extraction and interpretation).
But what he also did, by design or default, was get himself stuck. An inability to replace Dale was both a feature and flaw of his role. If he wanted to move on (and up), there was a decade of time to make himself replaceable and available for greater things.
For most people, being stuck with no increased responsibility or improved challenge is not the goal. The goal is the next job or interesting project.
My father’s career involved a lot of what is now benignly call post-merger integration. His company executed a multi-decade roll-up and he was on point for a lot of it, operating as the transition/turnaround lead in newly acquired companies. Apparently it involved a lot of terminations. But it also involved building. Because he would arrive at a newly acquired operation as the temporary General Manager and his job was not complete until there was a new General Manager prepared for the role.
“You do not get the next job until you’ve prepared someone to successfully do your job,” he told me more often than once.
The requirement (from risk averse leaders above us) is not only the demonstration of our own readiness, but that too of someone’s readiness to backfill us.
It is embracing making yourself replaceable.
The best development route to create this replacement readiness is delegation.
Many leaders struggle with delegation, from the newly promoted to the most experienced who simply take on too much. Moving from an individual contributor to overseeing the efforts of others can be challenging. It requires leaders to spend their time differently and develop different skill sets this includes balancing workloads and avoiding overtasking subordinates. Some leaders may experience the opposite situation by delegating too much. Some basic guidelines apply to all leaders:
Delegating improperly, or failing to delegate at all, leads to organizational failure.
A leader’s role is to ensure the task is accomplished, not to complete the task personally.
While completing daily, weekly, and monthly planning and reflection, leaders ask, “What am I doing that I should delegate?" “What do I delegate that I should not?”
Leaders cannot develop subordinates without delegating to them.
Leaders cannot adjust and expand their unit’s capabilities without delegating.
ADP 6-22, 7-10, PDF page 96
Leaders cannot develop subordinates without delegating to them. Leaders cannot adjust and expand their own responsibilities without delegating.
This week, borrow with pride and make a plan to train your replacement. What can you delegate? Who is ready to take on more responsibility and how can you help them? What are you doing to prepare your backfill? How do you develop people?
Get Familiar With: Prioritizing Development
Committed leaders continuously improve their organization, leaving it better than they found it. They expect other leaders to do the same. Leaders look ahead and prepare subordinates with potential to assume positions with greater leadership responsibility; in turn, subordinates develop themselves to prepare for future leadership assignments. Leaders ensure subordinates know that those who are best prepared for increased responsibility are those they are most likely to select for higher leadership positions.
ADP 6-22, 6-5, PDF page 79
A leader of people is by default a developer of people. Of themselves, their peers, subordinates, and sometimes even their superiors. Delegation, a critical component of self and subordinate development, is only one of the many tools and techniques advised by the US Army.
How do you develop people? Is ‘People Developer’ a title that feels authentic or is it still an aspiration? Are others ready to take over from you and excel when you leave? Is your development of people limited to training, or is it more comprehensive?
The Guided Discovery for this week will examine the US Army’s five competencies for developing and achieving, and techniques to evenly developing yourself, individuals and teams.
Learn More: Suggested Reading
ADP 6-22, Army Leadership and the Profession
Pages 6-1 through 7-4 based on printed document (PDF pages 79-98)
Reviewing the US Army’s five competencies for developing and achieving: prepares self, creates a positive environment, develops others, stewards the profession, and gets results
These materials will be the focus of Thursday’s Guided Discovery
Catch Up: Last Week’s Content
Study: NASCAR
Guided Discovery: Followship
Always be asking:
1. What is the connection with my leadership development?
2. How does this change my thinking on management?
3. How does this influence planning for life?
4. What can I borrow with pride to use this week?