Even now, after years of regular exercise, I follow the same rule when I’m starting something new: stop before it hurts.
Not because I can’t push through. Because if the early experiences are miserable, I won’t come back. The people who stick with any hard thing long-term aren’t the ones who gritted their teeth through the beginning. They’re the ones who found a way to like it enough to keep showing up, enough to push harder over time.
Leadership works the same way.
You know the management pipeline is already thinning, and the consequences are mostly ahead of us. Some of you came away thinking: okay, but my job is to grow the business, not run a happiness program.
That’s exactly right. So let’s talk about the business problem.
We have two problems running in parallel
The first is the pipeline. If you can’t answer “who’s next” when a key leader leaves, you’re one departure away from a crisis. 77% of CHROs lack confidence in their leadership pipeline. Half of CEO successions last year were unplanned. This isn’t a people problem, it’s a business continuity problem.
The second is change velocity. Things are moving faster than they ever have. AI is reshaping roles. Markets are shifting. The job your managers are doing today isn’t the job they’ll be doing in three years. So even if you filled your pipeline today, the destination keeps moving.
Different problems. Same solution.
Here’s what to change
The first thing we need to get better at is preparing people before they’re in the role. Not a seminar or a training day, but real responsibility with real support. Give them a genuine taste of what leadership involves before they’re in the deep end alone. There’s a difference between attending a workshop on delegation and actually delegating something consequential while others are watching. One creates potential, the other builds it.
Some of the people who go through that experience will want more. All of them will be more capable, more empathetic, and more supportive of whoever is managing them. This doesn’t just develop the people; it builds the culture.
The second is this: the people already in management roles need to be actively designing those roles, not just surviving them.
Here’s what I see when I work with senior leaders. Their roles are always changing. Something shifts in the business, the market, the team, and suddenly the job looks different than it did six months ago. That’s not a problem. That’s the nature of leadership. But adapting to it is a skill, and it has to be developed deliberately.
The role can’t be handed down from above and inherited unchanged. Executives, company leaders, and the managers themselves all need to be part of shaping what the role is and what it’s becoming. That’s how you build something that holds up when things are changing fast.
Build the system
I have a framework for a system that prepares people before they lead and creates a structure for ongoing role design. I call it the Spiral Development Matrix, or the SDM.
The SDM is built around three stages of role mastery:
Practice — learning what the role requires. A new manager figuring out what performance conversations really involve is in Practice. So is a senior director navigating board relationships for the first time. You’re learning by doing.
Perform — getting consistently good at it. Mastery here means the work is no longer effortful; it’s reliable. You can do it under pressure, with different people, without having to think through every step.
Pioneer — contributing beyond the scope of the role itself. Creating something, solving something, or developing something that didn’t exist before. Exceptional, not just proficient.
Here’s the design feature that matters most: a new role means you start back at Practice. A high-performing manager who moves into a VP role goes back to Practice in the dimensions that are genuinely new. That keeps development from stalling out after the first promotion and creates a shared language for where someone actually is, not just what title they hold.
The matrix is organized around four domains. These are called RISERS, which stands for: Relationships and Influence, Skills and Experience, Results, and Systems. Each domain has its own progression through the three stages. Together, they give a clear picture of where someone is and what they’re actually building toward.
What makes the SDM work as a development tool, rather than just an assessment, is that the employee builds it with their manager. They’re not handed a matrix and told where they stand. They’re working through it together, identifying where they are, what they’re developing, what the next stage looks like. Development stops being something done to people and starts being something they’re doing with their leaders.
Ask yourself this…
If someone talented, someone you’d want in a leadership role, looked at your management job from the outside, would they want it? Not “is it important.” Not “does it pay okay.” Would they look at what the role actually requires day to day, what support exists, what the path looks like, and think: I want that?
If the answer is no, or if you’re not sure, that’s where the work starts.
Not with better recruiting. Not with titles. Not with hoping the right person steps up when you need them to. Start by designing a role worth stepping into and by building a system that gets people ready before they have to figure it out on their own.
The pipeline is thinning right now, and change is accelerating. The organizations that build for both of those things today won’t feel the shortage or the disruption that everyone else will feel in three to five years.
Prepare now. That’s how you win the long game.
Want to find out how you can use the Spiral Development Matrix in your organization? Book a management strategy call and let’s talk!