How do some firms produce a pipeline of consistently excellent managers? Instead of concentrating merely on strengthening the skills of individuals, these companies focus on building a broad organizational leadership capability. It's what Ulrich and Smallwood--co-founders of the RBL Group, a leadership development consultancy--call a leadership brand. Organizations with leadership brands take an "outside-in" approach to executive development. They begin with a clear statement of what they want to be known for by customers and then link it with a required set of management skills. The Lexus division of Toyota, for instance, translates its tagline--"The pursuit of perfection"--into an expectation that its leaders excel at managing quality processes. The slogan of Bon Secours Health System is "Good help to those in need." It demands that its managers balance business skills with compassion and caring. The outside-in approach helps firms build a reputation for high-quality leaders whom customers trust to deliver on the company's promises. In examining 150 companies with strong leadership capabilities, the authors found that the organizations follow five strategies. First, make sure managers master the basics of leadership--for example, setting strategy and grooming talent. Second, ensure that leaders internalize customers' high expectations. Third, incorporate customer feedback into evaluations of executives. Fourth, invest in programs that help managers hone the right skills by tapping customers to participate in such programs. Finally, track the success of efforts to build leadership bench strength over the long term. The result is outstanding management that persists even when individual executives leave. In fact, companies with the strongest leadership brands often become "leader feeders"--firms that regularly graduate leaders who go on to head other companies.

A leadership crisis has erupted at Barker Foods. Doug Lothian, the national sales director of the chocolates and confections division, was just fired for making some bad marketing choices, engaging in questionable selling behaviors, and, ultimately, losing the confidence of his customers and his staff. As a result, there's a schism in Sales. Senior managers are wondering whether a competency model would help the company replace Doug with the right kind of leader and prevent other leadership problems from cropping up. HR director Anne Baxter thinks Doug's situation is the perfect example of why Barker Foods needs to define exactly what it's looking for from its top people. Colin Anthony, the CEO, has given Anne the go-ahead to work with a special task force on a framework that would not only highlight the critical values, knowledge, and skills necessary to lead any of the company's divisions but also identify the corresponding tasks, behaviors, and measures of success. Colin has asked Anne and her team to present their findings to the executive committee, which has voiced mixed opinions about competency modeling. On the one hand, it makes sense to hire and develop the right people to execute the company's strategy; on the other, it doesn't seem wise to oversimplify the work that senior executives do--and boiling down great leadership to a checklist of qualities could be a step in that direction. Should the executive committee go forward with plans for competency modeling? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0701B and R0701Z are: Reuben Mark, chairman of Colgate-Palmolive; Rebecca Ray, senior vice president for global learning and organizational development at MasterCard Worldwide; George Manderlink, a partner in Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Consulting; and Dave Ulrich, a cofounder of the RBL Group, a leadership consultancy.

A leadership crisis has erupted at Barker Foods. Doug Lothian, the national sales director of the chocolates and confections division, was just fired for making some bad marketing choices, engaging in questionable selling behaviors, and, ultimately, losing the confidence of his customers and his staff. As a result, there's a schism in Sales. Senior managers are wondering whether a competency model would help the company replace Doug with the right kind of leader and prevent other leadership problems from cropping up. HR director Anne Baxter thinks Doug's situation is the perfect example of why Barker Foods needs to define exactly what it's looking for from its top people. Colin Anthony, the CEO, has given Anne the go-ahead to work with a special task force on a framework that would not only highlight the critical values, knowledge, and skills necessary to lead any of the company's divisions but also identify the corresponding tasks, behaviors, and measures of success. Colin has asked Anne and her team to present their findings to the executive committee, which has voiced mixed opinions about competency modeling. On the one hand, it makes sense to hire and develop the right people to execute the company's strategy; on the other, it doesn't seem wise to oversimplify the work that senior executives do-- and boiling down great leadership to a checklist of qualities could be a step in that direction. Should the executive committee go forward with plans for competency modeling? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0701B and R0701Z are: Reuben Mark, chairman of Colgate-Palmolive; Rebecca Ray, senior vice president for global learning and organizational development at MasterCard Worldwide; George Manderlink, a partner in Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Consulting; and Dave Ulrich, a cofounder of the RBL Group, a leadership consultancy.

By making the most of organizational capabilities--employees' collective skills and fields of expertise--you can dramatically improve your company's market value. Although there is no magic list of proficiencies that every organization needs to succeed, the authors identify 11 intangible assets that well-managed companies tend to have: talent, speed, shared mind-set and coherent brand identity, accountability, collaboration, learning, leadership, customer connectivity, strategic unity, innovation, and efficiency. Such companies typically excel in only three of these capabilities while maintaining industry parity in the other areas. Organizations that fall below the norm in any of the 11 are likely candidates for dysfunction and competitive disadvantage. To determine how your company fares in these categories (or others, if the generic list doesn't suit your needs), the authors explain how to conduct a "capabilities audit," describing in particular the experiences and findings of two companies that recently performed such audits. In addition to highlighting which intangible assets are most important given the organization's history and strategy, this exercise gauges how well your company delivers on its capabilities and guides you in developing an action plan for improvement. A capabilities audit can work for an entire organization, a business unit, or a region--indeed, for any part of a company that has a strategy to generate financial or customer-related results. It enables executives to assess overall company strengths and weaknesses, senior leaders to define strategy, mid-level managers to execute strategy, and frontline leaders to achieve tactical results.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Commitment and competence are embedded in how each employee thinks about and does his or her work and in how a company organizes to get work done. It is, according to the author, a firm's only appreciable asset. As the need for intellectual capital increases, companies must find ways to ensure that it develops and grows. There are five tools for increasing competence in a firm, site, business, and plant: hire outside, new talent; invest in employee learning and training; hire consultants and form partnerships with suppliers, customers, and vendors to share knowledge, create new knowledge, and bring in new ways to work; remove employees who fail to change, learn, and adapt; and find ways to keep valuable workers. Companies also need to foster employees who are not only competent but committed. Employees with too many demands and not enough resources to cope with those demands quickly burn out, become depressed, and lack commitment. A company can build commitment in three ways: First, reduce demand on employees by prioritizing work, focusing only on critical activities, and streamlining work processes. Second, increase resources by giving employees control over their own work, establishing a vision for the company that creates excitement about work, compensating workers fairly, sharing information on the company's long-range strategy, and providing new technologies, among other things. Third, turn demands into resources by exploring how company policies may erode commitment, ensuring that new managers and workers are clear about expectations, understanding family commitments, and having employees participate in decision making.

Mention "human resources" and most line and operating managers groan. Simply put, HR has a reputation for inefficiency and incompetence. But a new and transforming era for HR has arrived, asserts Dave Ulrich, a professor at University of Michigan's school of business. The challenges of today's competitive environment mean that HR must refocus its work away from activities that sap value from the organization and instead focus its efforts on achieving outcomes that improve company performance. Ulrich says HR's radical reinvention must be led by senior managers.