How to Support Employee Growth and Sustain It as a Leader

How to Support Employee Growth and Sustain It as a Leader

Sean: We have a question. How do you map out a plan for your employees’ growth and promotion?

Jeff: You have to probably first identify where do you want to bring the company in the first place? Again, growth in a company happens when your people are also growing. See, I’ve seen many companies in the past that, as you know, they grew too fast, too soon, and forgot the people that are in the company, and they didn’t grow them together with the organization. What happens is that they kept on growing. They hired people from the outside to sustain the growth. But unfortunately, you know, when you put in new blood, it’s a good thing once in a while to eventually put in new blood so that it would challenge the organization. But if you keep on pouring in new people from the outside and you’re not growing internal, it will eventually disrupt your momentum, your culture, and so on.

Jeff: So how do you map it out? First again, identify the company’s objective or your company’s roadmap, and eventually translate it to the structure that you have. By the way, Sean. I like this framework. It’s called McKinsey’s Seven S. So, whenever we have start planning, we would usually use McKinsey sevens to eventually help us what to do with the strategy that we’ve come up with. So, in that seven S, you have the strategy, the structure, the system, the skill sets, the style of the leader and the shared values, and also the staffing in terms of putting it together. So part of that is your system which you would eventually review and revise in relation to the new structure, in relation to the new types of staff or the number of staff, and in terms of the skill sets that are needed to eventually achieve the strategy that you’ve set for the organization. So it’s something that you would first identify the goals and from that goal, the strategy, identify the structure, what kind of staff, what are the skill sets, and then eventually what are the systems you’ll have to put in place. And I think this is one of them, we call it in some companies as the comprehensive talent development program. As you mentioned it is a bit complex, but to put it in simple terms, once you know the organization’s goals, strategy, structure, the staff, the system will eventually follow. You’ll have to map it out based on how you want the company to grow in relation to the employees that you’ve hired or you will hire in the future.