Carrick Research’s Post

Greetings friends, it’s Carrick Research again. Back in the saddle after a long-time off LinkedIn and wanted to discuss some trends that we are seeing in the #employment world. One thing that we've been watching for a couple of years is the lack of #successionplanning in the last decade. We first noticed it in energy banking and finance where it seemed that older leadership was unwilling to hire/train anyone that could take their job. While it’s an obvious reaction to defend your own job/livelihood, this was an arena of strong personality-types and aggressive people who usually relish in those challenges. We started seeing it in other clients and, over time, it’s become a pain point. Eventually, people retire, and they need to be backfilled; where are we going to find that talent? Trying to pull from competitors is the obvious answer unless they’re struggling with the same lack or mid-level executive talent. Everyone is 60 or 25. Great for the headhunters of the world but, overall, a bad thing for the health of the industry we love (and need to continue thriving). Now, years later, we are also seeing a dramatic decline in young people wanting to get into the energy or energy finance industry compared to the late 2010s (ask anyone that does campus recruiting for a super-major). So, we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle. Senior execs are exiting (slowly) and we have a full court press to attract junior talent—young professionals who are coming off of 8 years of being told that traditional energy is going to kill them. Caught in the middle of all this are first time executives who didn’t have the benefit of mentorship (or they had it and it was brief) being thrown into significant leadership positions where they must develop new skills on the job. As an individual contributor, you do what your good at. As a manager, you help individual contributors succeed at what you (and hopefully they) are good at. When moving into an executive role your scope expands beyond solely what your good at, beyond just your specialty, and you must develop a new set of skills in order to manage, coach and direct folks that may be doing something that you only understand academically or understand solely as a concept with no practical experience. What is the best way to overcome that gap? Trial by fire isn't always the answer. More on this later from our president, Ted McCrann, who may or may not be writing this... #eft #headhunter #planningahead