I had the good fortune awhile ago to interview a remarkably successful and happily retired CEO about his career in growing and running a number of teams and businesses.  This gentleman, a dedicated engineer, reflected modestly on his successes and candidly about his failures in a 45-year career in manufacturing and technology organizations. 

One of the many priceless discussion threads during the interview, focused on the challenges of developing leadership and individual contributor talent in technical organizations.  Specifically, he railed at the "single career-track" approach that in his opinion results in many otherwise great individual contributors pursuing leadership roles for the wrong reasons regardless of their interest or capabilities for leading.  There is wisdom in his perspective.

Consistent with the retired CEO’s observations, I’ve noticed in many technical organizations that the easiest and fastest way to grow earnings and prestige is by leading others.  This situation is compounded by compensation policies that tend to run out of headroom for individual contributors, forcing leaders to engage in politely worded morale destroying conversations about, "that’s just the way it is."  The net result of course is to push people that are not interested or qualified for leadership roles to pursue these positions or jump ship as the only means of advancing. 

In my politest terms, any system that either fails to recognize and reward individual talent or that unduly suggests that people must lead to succeed, is sheer insanity. This is 1950’s (or earlier) management thinking in a world where leadership talent and knowledge workers are core strategic assets. 

The Approach:

The retired CEO described his recognition of this poor practice early in his career and subsequent development of a system that ensured that individual contributors had a viable ability to grow their earnings and prestige without being forced into managing.  In parallel, the CEO also did what most technical organizations still fail to do today, he focused on creating a system for identifying and developing prospective leaders.  The approach called for providing prospective leaders with a diverse set of developmental experiences and challenges, very similar to what Ram Charan describes as his Apprenticeship Model in his recent book, Leaders at All Levels. 

Of course, the retired CEO wasn’t always CEO and he started his push for the two-track approach early in his career, arguing based on the benefits and value created by keeping the best and brightest technical professionals focused on innovating and out of the people leading business.  Armed with a few good disasters to point to from the firm’s prior poor leader selection attempts, and with a willingness to put himself on the line for results, he ultimately whittled down resistance through a series of experiments that evolved into policies.  As his career developed and his approaches bore fruit in the form of market-leading products and rapid growth, it became easier to refine and institutionalize the two-track system. 

The bottom-line:

There is a lot to learn from someone who has plowed considerable ground ahead of us.  If innovation is important to your firm, you are well served to find ways to keep your best knowledge workers happy and focused.  You are also well served by introducing rigor into the identification and development of prospective leaders.  A great engineer or software architect might be capable of leading, but you don’t want to force them into the role for any reason other than a strong personal desire and a keen awareness of what it takes to lead. 

The two-track system will force you to rethink traditional programs and processes and even the ridiculously narrow and misguided expense ratios that many organizations blindly adhere to.  Learn from the retired CEO’s example and develop a watertight argument based on value-creation.  Start talking and developing support for your ideas with anyone in a position to help.  And don’t forget to put yourself on the line for results.  It’s what leaders do and it’s how careers are made.