What's in Your Staff Pipeline?

Young rejects the JIT approach because it tends to feed an elite group of potential leaders into a pipeline that is, in effect, small-bore, off to the side and disconnected from other “flows” in the organization’s processes and dynamics. This pipeline carries the usual management development programs, maybe some succession planning, maybe something in competency enhancement — all good stuff, but (a) not enough stuff, and (b) stuff for not enough people.

The Integrated Approach is a bigger, better pipeline, a veritable gusher of leadership and human resource development.

The Integrated pipeline doesn’t sit off to the side, reserved for a chosen few. It’s designed to carry the full flow of the organization’s strategic plan. Delivering far more than a drip-drip-drip of new talent to the top, it supplies leadership right where it’s needed most: everywhere.

We call this pipeline “integrated” because it brings together knowledge and competencies from throughout the organization.

Here’s how:
-- It integrates the full breadth of human resource development: workforce and succession planning, recruitment and retention, competency development, training, knowledge management and program evaluation.
-- It identifies what leaders need: knowledge from outside their department, understanding at the enterprise level and a broad network of relationship.
-- It provides for those needs: with assignments aimed at expanding knowledge and relationships.
-- It pays off: with better employee retention, a more dynamic culture, unpredictable innovation and cross-departmental collaboration.
-- To make the Integrated pipeline flow efficiently, management must work with every department and at every level. It must identify where leadership is needed — from the mailroom to the boardroom. It must identify what those leaders need to know. Then it must build an all-encompassing pipeline that moves people (and their knowledge) into positions of leadership.

The study looks at governments, which are facing a CPA talent shortage that pales in comparison with the shortage at CPA firms. Still, the conclusions could apply to many organizations. We, as a profession and an industry, lack personnel at the input end of the pipeline. We can’t afford to have the pipeline dedicated exclusively to placing partners in corner offices. We need leaders at all levels — people who know the ever-shifting field of finance and accountancy, people who understand the various sectors that accountants deal with, people who know information technology, people who can orchestrate an administrative staff that must consistently perform with meticulous accuracy, people who can work with people.

The integrated pipeline model works as the central theme of an effective overall strategy and long-term plan. By mapping out the flow of people through the organization, from where they enter to where they’re needed, you can structure the dynamics of an entire organization.

Or you can pretend that your organization will survive forever on the old drip-drip-drip into the upper ranks. That might have worked back when “accounting” meant “bookkeeping,” but today to run a profitable accounting firm or an effective finance department, you need a mighty big pipeline, one that’s big enough for everybody.



[First published by the AICPA]