Talent is a major competitive advantage. The $40 billion Aditya Birla Group (ABG) knows it very well and has been investing in creating a solid leadership talent pipeline to come from their 1.2 lakh employees across the world.

A journey of building an internal leadership pipeline responds to many external business forces — dearth of leadership talent, importance of careers as retention tool, importance of culture fit and much more. While these are true for pretty much all organizations, only those that have a long-term commitment to creating an internal pipeline will eventually be able to reap the benefits of a high-potential program integrated in their talent strategy.

It is a bold move from the top management that has been carefully drafted over many years of designing this internal ecosystem. ABG has been consistently ranked in different benchmarking studies as a great employer, especially for the leadership cadre. The group was ranked Number 4 in the global ‘Top Companies for Leaders’ survey conducted by Aon Hewitt, Fortune Magazine, and RBL and ranked Number 1 in Asia Pacific for 2011.

In 2011, when People Matters did a special story on this study, ABG was already filling 30 out of 40 key positions from their leadership development program. Being a conglomerate, ABG offers different learning environments to employees to develop their potential either as a ‘Profit and Loss leader’, ‘Functional leader’ or as a ‘Specialist’. “The effectiveness of the leadership and development program is assessed on the basis of how many critical positions the group has been able to fill internally,” shared Dr. Santrupt Misra, CEO, Carbon Black Business and Director, Group Human Resources of ABG. Additionally, the group has been investing in many initiatives that complement this effort, from institutionalizing deputy heads as second line of leadership for major companies in the group; launching a comprehensive leadership program in 2007 called a World of Opportunities, to attract the best talent from business schools across the world and institutionalizing a leadership program specifically to groom leadership talent in manufacturing with the Global Manufacturing Leadership Program. ABG has invested in building a top class internal team that drives these initiatives, hiring the likes of Ajay Sohni, former Asia Pacific Practice Leader - Leadership at Aon Hewitt as its Chief Learning and Leadership Development Officer seven months ago.

The strategic importance of these programs comes from the top and is driven by a clear understanding about what is required for the organization. Kumar Birla, in an internal conclave with his executives, shared that the group will institutionalize the process of workforce planning and align it with a ‘make versus buy’ plan for talent for the group. The real proof of the pudding is whether that leadership commitment translates into structures, investments, policies and programs across the board to actually show the results at the ground level. The effectiveness of these efforts will ultimately show in whether the organization can fill leadership positions internally or not. This is not something that organizations can copy and paste for their companies: to be successful, these programs require that level of commitment across the board.

ABG is clearly ahead of the game and has understood how the complete ecosystem works in synchrony, from the top all the way down, to create this leadership factory. The importance of an architected effort, with a long-term commitment from the top, prompts me to share this disclaimer with all our readers.

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