The most troubling problem I found when I joined AlliedSignal was the weakness of our operating management team—it wasn’t up to par with our competitors. And we were unlikely to produce future leaders, because we didn’t have any bench strength. When I retired from Allied Signal in 1999, I considered the greatest sign of our strength to be the extraordinary quality of our leadership pipeline. One measure of their quality was that several of our outstanding people had been recruited to lead other organizations, among them Paul Norris (who became CEO of W. R. Grace); Dan Burnham, hired as
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This shows just how important leadership development and building bench strength is for a successful organization
