Wealth Creators – The Key to Corporate Success
Wealth Creators: Thinking outside the 9 box
Wealth Creators have the potential to add huge value to businesses that they work in. They possess a mix of personality traits, skills and motivations that give them a natural drive to add significant value to business – and do it every day. They can be found at all levels of business, from graduate trainees to the CEO. The secret is to identify who are the wealth creators in your organisation and then make sure that you do everything possible to nurture their talent to ensure that they add value to your organisation in the long term.
Identifying Wealth Creators – The 9 Box Matrix
Wealth Creators represent a very small percentage of the workforce and perhaps the best way to think of them is as an extension of the 9 box Matrix used to evaluate an organisation’s talent pool. In the classic 9 box matrix, the X axis represents a scale of leadership performance and the Y axis assesses leadership potential. Placement in the top right box of the grid (High potential, Exceeds expectations) indicates that an individual is ready for a move to a more senior role.
Wealth creators encompass all of the attributes of a high potential; They have high intellectual ability, are highly competitive, emotionally stable and are strongly motivated by rewards.
Hence, they can be considered to be outside the 9 box.
Why Organisations Need Wealth Creators
Wealth Creators bring energy, drive and focus to organisation. A company that does not have wealth creators in at least some of its senior roles is at serious risk and one with too few will struggle to survive.
Some years ago, HFI was called on by a medium sized professional services company who’s CEO was about to retire. They were looking to find a successor to replace him. Having assessed the partners, it was that none of them was a Wealth Creator - in fact the only one in the management team was a relatively junior manager in his late 20’s. Our recommendation was that they promote and develop him over a period of time into the role: the client refused and instead, promoted one of the partners and the Wealth Creator left to set up his own firm. The new business that he started became three times the size of the company that he had left. The client went into administration some time later.
What are the Key Roles where Organisations Need Wealth Creators?
Ideally, every company should have 2 or 3 wealth creators at executive level: The CEO being the obvious choice and then two others in perhaps senior sales / commercial roles and then perhaps finance. In finance, a wealth creator can add significant value by introducing concepts such as lean manufacturing which can give a business a competitive advantage.
Nobody’s Perfect - The Challenges of Working with Wealth Creators
The downside of working with this high performing individuals is that they are typically very challenging to work with, can be demanding. With their drive, love of competition and dominant nature, they may rub people up the wrong way. Coaching can be used to help them to develop some ‘soft skills’ which they are likely to need to work on. Whether they are recognised and promoted depends largely on the culture of company and whether their unique talents are recognised and valued.
Developing Young Wealth Creators into Senior Roles
The key to competitive advantage is creating an environment which encourages talented people to be the best that they can be. Many organisations fail to recognise when they have an uncut jewel of talent and risk losing that person if they failing to manage them properly.
Assessment is the best way to identify the young wealth creator. Once identified, it is important to recognise their likely route to wealth creation (expert, corporate etc.) and devise a process to support and develop the person including education and experience by simulation.
Human Factors: Helping you Make the Most of your Wealth Creators
Now, more than ever, organisations need to find ways to build competitive advantage that is sustainable for the long terms. For years, many companies have paid lip service to ‘our people are our greatest asset’ – but now this oft overused maxim is truer than ever. Smart managers not only say it, but mean it – and understand that walking the talk means investing time and resources in identifying, developing and retaining talented people.
We can help companies identifies whether they have any Wealth Creators and, having identified them, advise companies on the best way to utilise, support and develop them. Coaching can be highly effective with these high potential individuals. We can help coach them to be as effective as possible.