Big boss blues: 86% of Asian business owners suffer from leadership talent dearth

They struggle to develop a pool of candidates.

Business leaders painfully admitted that there just isn’t enough people in their organization to take on the reins and help lead the company. To make this worse, they also plead guilty to getting cold feet when talking about their capability to govern as fickle markets and unpredictable business environment make the business outlook foggy.

While they acknowledge that leadership is an important part of running a business, 86 percent of business owners have admitted that they are currently suffering from a growth-stunting lack of leadership talent, according to a report by Deloitte.

“It’s imperative that organisations treat leadership development as a long term investment, rather than a discretionary development spend item when times are favourable,” said Nicky Wakefield, Executive Director and Leader of the Southeast Asia Human Capital practice for Deloitte Consulting.

“By implementing impactful leadership programmes, organisations will be able to create a strong differentiated leadership pipeline and enjoy improvements in their business performance. We believe that leadership is the only sustainable competitive advantage organisations will enjoy in the future,” she added.

Meanwhile, insufficient skill also plagues the current workforce and is expected to impede business growth.

“Despite intense spending on training programmes, organisations are quickly falling behind on developing the right skills across all levels. It is critical that organisations re-evaluate their learning programmes and develop a better understanding of current and future capability requirements for job roles in order to optimise effectiveness in developing specific skills,” said Jason Seng, Singapore Leader in the Southeast Asia Human Capital practice for Deloitte Consulting.