Reading an “obscure article,” I was reminded of an important leadership principle. It’s something I’ve not seen anywhere in discussions of leadership, GTM, or building business. It’s the concept of building Bench Strength.
Building bench strength focuses not only on the current performance of people in the organization, but it focuses on developing their capabilities for the future. It focuses on developing people’s abilities to step into new roles and make greater contributions to the organization.
We know the importance of bench strength in sports teams. Back-filling an injured player, bringing in someone with deep skills for the situation, minimizing the disruption of someone leaving. Bench strength is critical to the success of any sports team, otherwise, why would they spend the money on those people?
As I grew as a leader, building bench strength was critical for me and each of the leaders on my teams. It was something my managers expected of me, and evaluated me on. In fast growing businesses, the ability to have a bench of people that can step into new roles and continue to drive growth is critical. The ability to have an experienced, knowledgeable person within the organization. A person who had the skills and mindset to up their game and contribute at a higher level is critical to driving growth and performance.
The alternative is being forced to recruit from the outside. Look at the time and risk of bringing a new person into the organization, then the inevitable ramp time for them to understand the strategies, how work gets done, customers, and other things, then putting the strategies in place, driving continued growth and high levels of performance. Think of the opportunity cost to this! Think of the risk! Even highly skilled/experienced people fail too often. They may be the right people in the wrong role. Or the ramp time might be too long. Or we may not be able to capitalize on the opportunity if we move too slowly.
As I look at consistently high performing organizations, one thing that is noticeable is the conscious effort they invest in building bench strength. Coaching people to perform in their current roles, but developing them to be able to step into greater levels of responsibility. Perhaps taking people from SDR/BDR roles to AE to AM to Product Sales Specialists or other roles. Or possibly into management.
If we are successful in our growth strategies, we will constantly be needing to expand, to add people and resources to exploit the growth opportunities. Success inevitably means recruiting and onboarding new people. But having people within the organization that can step into bigger and different responsibilities enables us to respond with greater agility. We capture opportunities that would otherwise be lost in the time it takes to find and get outsiders productive. We leverage the extensive experience of our own people, reducing the risk of bringing in outsiders. And we help them grow in their careers and capabilities.
But today, we seem to reward the opposite behaviors. Tenures have plummeted, attrition is skyrocketing. Engagement and employee satisfaction is down. We are cultivating and rewarding revolving door cultures. People, at all levels don’t see opportunities to succeed, grow, and advance in their current organizations, so they leave.
People will argue, “But Dave, you are missing the skyrocketing growth we’ve seen in so many sectors! You don’t understand, things are different!”
It’s true, we have seen stunning stories of growth, though those seem to be increasingly rare. But I look at those, thinking, “They could do so much better! They are wasting so much opportunity!”
Let’s dive into this a little.
Today, at all levels in selling, we have average tenures of 15 months or less. Even entry levels take months to achieve full productivity. But more senior and management levels take more time, regardless of experience. It tales time to learn the markets, how things get done, the challenges, and to develop strategies to address those challenges. Then, once we’ve identified those, it takes time to implement the change initiatives to drive full impact.
The reality is the majority of people leave before they have been able to have that impact and the results are realized. And they start the process all over again, with new people. And this proceeds…. It seems that success and growth might happen, in spite of these people! But so much opportunity is lost!
What if we had a culture of retaining, developing and growing our people? Developing bench strength so that we can move people into new roles as they are presented. We dramatically reduce the ramp time and the risk, enabling us to start to capture that growth opportunity as quickly as possible. And in this, we create backfill opportunities throughout the organization. People can move into new roles, creating new opportunities for new people throughout the organization.
What if we developed our current resources to help us accelerate our growth and success, backfilling them with new resources we develop to continue that success?
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