Tom Peters on Building Bench Strength

The war for talent is still ongoing. There is and will be for some time, a shortage of leadership talent as a result of the baby boomers leaving the workforce. There will be plenty of “bodies” available, but that doesn’t equate to talent. Cutting back on development efforts to grow your own leaders will leave you at the mercy of the market when the economy picks back up. You will end up paying more for outside talent instead of developing your bench strength now.
— Tom Peters, excerpted from this blog post

There’s a time for bringing in outside talent. A time when you need a franchise player who will shake things up and be pivotal. Someone to build teams around. And there’s a time when you have to suck it up, realize there’s no easy button to fix your internal woes, and you need to develop the people you have in expectation that they’ll be the ones to see you through.

Your job may very well be to know which time it is right now.