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Political Grooming
Once a potential successor is identified, grooming follows. None of the CIOs we interviewed were concerned about their potential successors' technical expertise. Instead, their aim was to hone their candidates' communication and political skills.
Gonzalez recalls that in a previous CIO job, for a billion-dollar-a-year manufacturer, it took some time to refine the way he tested his protégés. Once, he asked one of his candidates to make a presentation to the board of directors and alerted the board that this was part of the grooming process.
The presentation was supposed to be brief, but Gonzalez had asked the candidate to cover a lot of material. When the board asked questions, the candidate answered at length. After 20 minutes came the dreaded drumming of the fingers. Later, Gonzalez says, "The board really chewed me out. They said, 'We don't have 20 minutes to groom your successor.' The board was mad at me for wasting their time."
After that, Gonzalez made sure to narrow the scope of a candidates' presentations and limit them to three or four minutes. "If it starts to wreck, I'd get up and say, 'Let me add a little bit.'" Later, after the candidate was excused or at the next meeting, Gonzalez would apologize for any missteps. "I'd say, 'Hey, folks, thanks a lot. I appreciate you giving him the opportunity. I've still got some work to do on him. ... Thanks for helping me groom him.'"
Gartner's McDonald knows one CIO who took a much more conservative approach to face time. This CIO met with his president every other week. But when he brought the president's feedback to his senior staffers, they were often skeptical. Tired of translating, he started inviting his top three lieutenants to that meeting so they could hear the concerns firsthand. But he told them to remain seated at the back table on the other side of the room and not to speak unless spoken to.
Over time, the CIO began to ask these three for an increasing amount of input, and as he did, the president got to know them. Now they all sit at the same table. "The president is getting a sense for the skills of these people," McDonald says.
The biggest mistake CIOs can make in grooming successors is to assume that they are doing enough, Korn/Ferry's Rubenstrunk says. "Unless you and [HR] are working very closely together on a program that assures that people are being stretched out of their comfort zones, given additional responsibilities and broadening their experiences, you're probably not doing enough," she says. "Whatever it is, you're probably not doing enough."
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