Last month Aon Hewitt, The RBL Group and Fortune announced their Global Top Companies for Leaders list. It's been two years since the last list, not to be confused with the competing "Best Companies for Leaders" list sponsored by Businessweek and Hay Group.
I like to look below the hood of these rankings, to see if there's anything new to learn when it comes to leadership development. Sometimes I'll even call the person in charge of talent management. Is there some new silver bullet, some new magic formula that we can steal and replicate within our own companies?
Once again, the answer is no, not really. The companies that excel in leadership development do it better than the rest because they believe in it and take it seriously. They treat it as a strategic priority, spend a lot of time on it, provide meaningful developmental assignments to their high potentials, invest in it, and measure the heck out of their efforts to ensure its working.
I've always said if there was only ONE wish I could have when it came to leadership development it would be a CEO that was 100% committed to it. All the rest would then fall into place - even the most incompetent HR department couldn't screw it up if they tried. They couldn't, because they would be measured and held accountable.
One thing that's significant is that non-U.S. companies, like Hindustan Unilever are catching up. Only 13 out of 25 of the companies are U.S. based, compared to 17/25 two years ago. While it used to be emerging economies like China and India would turn to the U.S. and import their leadership development programs, now they are creating their own, in order to reflect their own cultural and market nuances.
Here's the full list:
1.IBM
2.General Mills, Inc.
3.The Procter & Gamble Company
4.Aditya Birla Management Corporation
5.Colgate-Palmolive Company
6.Hindustan Unilever
7.ICICI Bank Limited
8.McDonald's Corporation
9.Whirlpool Corporation
10.PepsiCo, Inc
11.General Electric Company
12.Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA)
13.Natura Cosmeticos S.A
14.Deere & Company
15.3M Company
16.Eli Lilly and Company
17.McKinsey and Company
18.L'Oreal
19.Unilever plc
20.Siemens AG
21.Intel Corporation
22.China Vanke Co., Ltd.
23.Wipro Ltd.
24.Bharti Aritel
25.Novartis AG
Any surprises?
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