Realizing Leadership Capital Advantage
Managing natural talent and developing the future generation of organization leaders are starting to be recognised as the keys to realizing human capital advantage over the competition in a world-wide knowledge economy. Given the probable talent deficit that will follow the retirement of a huge number of so-called ‘Baby Boomer’ executives and managers over the next 20 years, women leaders may invariably be seen by an increasing number of businesses as an untapped supply of talent, working experience and senior-management leadership.
Women bring identical academic credentials, vitality, desire, and intelligence to their work as their male colleagues. Yet startlingly fewer of them factor into corporate management succession programs much later in their careers. Considerable organisational transformation to find and alter the institutional characteristics that derail, de-motivate and/or devalue the career progress of women is required.
As numerous establishments grapple with a mandate to recruit, develop and hold on to tomorrow’s leaders, there is a great deal to discover about today’s corporate leadership profile. The following data puts the reality and the challenge into perspective:
* Women held just 17 percent of seats on the boards of Fortune 100 firms and just 11 percent of FTSE 100 directorships, as outlined by The Alliance for Board Diversity and The Equality and Human Rights Commission, respectively.
* One of the Alliance’s member institutions, Catalyst, has reportedly observed no increase in women on Fortune 500 boards in three years, yet is has also recognized a strikingly favourable connection concerning the number of women on the boards of companies and the number of women who in the end become corporate officers of the exact same company.
* Corporations with a larger share of women in top management may well perform much better, according to a McKinsey analysis.
* Though women earn not as much than their male counterparts, they help make more than 80% of the purchasing decisions in American homes, BusinessWeek reports.
* A new law that took effect recently mandates that 40% of board seats for 487 public firms have got to be held by women, according to Bloomberg.
* Only 43% of women professionals really feel well-equipped to be competitive in the business economy of the future, according to a report issued by Accenture.
* In 2007, women comprised just 6% of the best-rewarded executives, according to research by The Forum of Executive Women (Philadelphia).
Looking ahead, it’s very difficult to picture that the firms on the leading edge of the knowledge economy will get there or stay there without utilizing the practical experience and skills of women business leaders as their consumer segments continue to globalize and diversify.
Women executives will perform an increasingly fundamental role in building and shaping marketleading companies in the years to come. The task for these companies, therefore, is to fully understand the challenges unique to women leaders and the way in which to handle them in a way that grows the talent pool for a broad array of vital business functions. Astute executive search practices are progressively more mindful of the need to establish women’s leadership initiatives geared at leveling the playing field for career and organizational improvement.
Note to Editors: About TRANSEARCH International executive search
TRANSEARCH International executive search firm has representation in most of the major economic centres of the world with 59 offices in 37 countries. TRANSEARCH International was founded in 1982 and is a leading international executive search firm.
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