Doubling Down to Build Bench Strength

Presenter: Alec Levenson, Economist and Senior Research Scientist, USC Marshall Center for Effective Organizations

Description

Dr. Levenson will share the results of research and practice working with leading companies on an emerging area of competitive advantage. The challenges and rewards of building general management bench strength are well known but limited because of the small number of true general manger roles in organizations. The new area of competitive advantage is talent that spans two deep functional areas; examples include engineering and design; sales and analytics; and HR and finance. Organizations looking to build “dual strength” talent have addressed the issue using different approaches, including developing talent at the individual level, using cross-functional teams, and redesigning functions. In all cases, a key issue is identifying, cultivating and keeping people who can work seamlessly across deep functional lines.

What Will You Learn

* How to tradeoff taking a business as usual approach vs. following the doubling down approach.
* How to address the challenges of creating career paths that enable the development of deep skills across two strong functional areas.
* How to use organization design and job design tools to complement traditional talent management approaches

Who Will Participate

HR and OD people responsible for leadership development, talent management and organizational effectiveness.