Senior manager leadership development in rapid employee growth organizations

Abstract

Senior managers face significant operational challenges as well as enjoy significant personal growth opportunities while managing rapid employee growth organizations (defined as doubling employee strength within five years on an initial strength of at least ten thousand employees). How do they impact and modify their rapidly growing organisations and their own development as managers while coping with rapid employee growth? How do they manage the enhanced expectations placed on them due to their expanding roles in these rapidly growing organisations? We draw on anecdotal evidence from medium sized firms in the rapid growth Indian software services industry to develop a set of propositions that address these under-researched questions. The chosen research context is unique as several Indian software services firms have doubled employee strength within five years from a minimum ten thousand base – possibly unmatched in any industry worldwide. We formulate propositions that argue that, faced with rapid employee growth, leadership development practices for senior managers such as classroom programs, multi-source feedback, executive coaching, mentoring, networking, job assignments and action learning will depart significantly from those in normal employee growth firms. Senior managers will face rapidly growing demands and sudden expansion of work roles with lesser time to respond effectively – leading to individual-driven, emergent or opportunistic leadership development. Rapid employee growth also creates an upper level leadership vacuum that provides senior managers opportunities for out-of-turn promotions and rapid job rotations. This accelerates their leadership development enabling them to move faster into upper echelon positions.