"The issue today is whether America can nourish enough good leaders to forge a bright path into the 21st century". David Gergen quoted in U.S. News and World Report.

There will be 21 million new jobs created by 2012 and only 17 million new workers, and shortages become even more severe when we talk about leaders!

There are times when interesting 'bumps' happen in the course of human history that profoundly impacts what happens next. We seem to be entering that point with respect to the development of a sufficient bench strength of leaders. The most common conversation I have had about leadership in the last year is about whether we will have 'enough leaders' for this or that. No one seems to be too worried about having enough followers.

So how can we accelerate leadership development?

• We have to get those who are most developmentally ready positioned to learn, and we can measure that better today then yesterday.
• We have to stop talking about programs and get our heads into processes. For example, we are tinkering with the 'self awareness process' and if we can accelerate how fast you get to know you, we can accelerate leadership development.
• We know that positivity is a potential fuel for accelerating development. More focus is needed here.
• We know that peers drive accelerated leadership development, but they are underutilized in many leadership development interventions.
• We know that we must use followup to boost and accelerate development. Why can't we just use the cell phone as a point of interface to trigger development?
• Probably the best way to start accelerating leadership development is to make sure the context in which it is growing, is transparent, as free of fear as possible, which means people are taking 'ownership'.
• If you have the above, we can have 'intelligent failure'. The smarter we get around intelligent failure, the better we can accelerate leadership development.

Science advances thru disconfirmation..oops that didn' work...that's right, smart failures rule!!!!

So the key take away..... be an advocate of smart failures because if you are in a leader role, they will be watching to see how your smart failures made you a better leader...in less time.