Leadership is a Perishable Commodity ...

... but the expiry date changes when you change the shelf.

A friend of mine was asked to move from the US to China 7 years ago to start a new venture for a large chemical company. Lets call him Bill, for the purpose of anonimity.

He started slowly, struggled through the early months and faced an uphill challenge in navigating a new culture, a foreign language and an opaque regulatory system. 2 years through his frustration, things started falling into place. Bill managed to build a strong team, mostly with local talent, created a highly innovative distribution network and started on a path to success.

By the 4th year, the business was a raging success. China was contributing more to the bottomline than all other emerging markets combined and was set to triple the top line in 3 years. Products were flying off the shelf and the contract manufacturing network was creating millions of dollars in savings for the global company. Around the fifth year on the job, things took a sudden turn.

Bill started to hit a wall. While the company continued to expect miracles from China, he started to run out of new ideas. The small irritations in the business that he would take in his stride earlier began to sap his energy. By Year 6 he looked like he hadn't slept for a month. Bill was acutely aware that his expiry date as a leader might just be over.

The company, however, ran scared from the possibility of replacing their star manager in China. What if it all falls apart? Where can we ever find anyone to replace our best market leader? Several discussions ensued in the galactic headquarters and ended with elaborate action plans towards grooming a successor. But the eventuality of pulling Bill out of China was always pushed back by a 'couple more quarters'.

The first 2 quarters of Year 6 were nightmarish for Bill. He missed (for the first time since he started in China) the top line goals by a few percentage points. While 30% growth sounded robust by all standards, galactic headquarters was expecting 'more like 35'. Bottomline held up, but only because he managed to postpone some critical investments.

Finally, Bill had to take things in his own hands. He flew to the US, resignation letter in his pocket and demanded a move to a different role. To cut a long story short (some might say -too late for that!) he is now in Brazil effecting the largest turnaround in the company's history - and he looks and feels 10 years younger. A young upcoming manager from Poland moved into Bill's role in China and is enjoying the challenge of taking China to the next level.

Moral of the story - leaders have personal expiry dates on any given challenge. The best way to build leaders is to move them around and take them through a steady stream of progressively steeper challenges. Keeping them on the same shelf for too long is courting disaster.

Trouble is, we all know that. Bill's story is by no means exceptional. There are hundreds and thousands of Bills in global companies, driven by personal motivation, desire to prove themselves and strong organizational support working themselves ever closer to the dreaded expiry date.

A handful of companies around the world have mastered the art of moving leaders into new challenges ahead of this date. These companies enjoy, as a result, less variability in results, stronger pipeline of future leaders, and faster growth trajectory for existing leaders. They tend to lose less of their key talent to competition simply because it is easier to find new challenges inside the company than outside.

The vast majority of companies, however, simply refuse to understand the fact the leadership is perishable. They spend an enormous amount of money and resources in assessing and identifying their best talent, send them to the occassional leadership development retreat in a business school and believe that their contribution to leader building is done.

When some of these 'superstar' leaders derail, they quickly start blaming the assessment process (we didn't pick the right horse) or the development retreats. The fact is, real leader building involves a carefully orchestrated set of moves, from shelf to shelf, with increasing steepness in challenge for a carefully selected set of talent ...

... all with expiry dates stamped on their backs.