Joined-up HR establishes horizontal links between development and a range of other HR interventions that together increase the chance of obtaining the desired leadership outputs needed by the business.

Organisations that lack joined-up thinking risk:

• developing leaders at considerable expense, then letting them languish in unimportant functions where their talents cannot be used fully
• one department recruiting talent while another selects people for redundancy on the cost criterion rather than ability
• failing to act upon poor leaders when they become part of the problem rather than part of the solution
• pouring leadership talent in at one end of the employment pipeline, and then carelessly letting it escape at the other

Development-related issues arise at several places on the employment spectrum – phases in careers that call for optimal HR management. Besides having discrete development inputs at an appropriate career point, related considerations include:

1. What leadership talent needs to enter the system?
2. How can the most talented leaders be allocated to the most important jobs?
3. Should newly developed leaders receive a change of job?
4. What criteria are used to assess the effective practice of leadership?
5. How is good leadership recognised and rewarded (and bad leadership ‘punished’)?
6. What criteria are used to assess suitability for promotion to senior positions?
7. What provision is made for successors?
8. How is leadership talent escaping unplanned from, as well as formally exiting, the organisation?