Companies face looming leadership crisis - IBM study
Companies worldwide face a looming leadership crisis due to the retirement of baby boomers (see text at the end of this post) and rapid growth in Asia with half fearful they cannot develop the skills they need, a study released on Thursday (Oct 18 2007) said. The survey by IBM's consulting arm interviewed 400 HR executives from 40 countries and suggests companies are putting growth strategies at risk if they cannot identify and develop the next generation of leaders. Baby boomers will drain companies of valuable knowledge when they retire, while multinational firms need to find people to lead their businesses in booming markets such as India and China , the study said. "You've got this perfect storm of leadership crisis that is hitting the mature and maturing markets," said IBM's Eric Lesser, one of three co-authors of the study "Companies are really crunched both in terms of their current capacity of leadership and also their ability to develop lea...