Future Ready – CBL Leadership Dev. Program

Advertisement

NASSAU , BAHAMAS – Every business owner eventually faces the same question: Who is prepared to lead when the business changes, grows, or faces pressure?

Experts say the companies that wait until that moment arrives may already be behind.

Our weekend edition of Leading Forward looks at Cable Bahamas’ year-long leadership development program through a wider lens.

Kendeno Knowles explores what it means for businesses to prepare leaders before they are urgently needed.

Ernesto Uscher – Partner & Managing Dir., The RBL Group
“The first is, how do we develop future-ready leaders? So we’re training leaders in some of those high potentials. We’re coaching them, we’re helping them understand their competencies and their styles. So we’re doing a lot of assessments and trying to construct in them agility, adaptability, accountability, so that they can strive in that dynamic business environment that we have right now.”

Future-ready can sound like corporate language, but for business owners, the idea is practical.

Who understands the business well enough to help move it forward?

Who can lead through change? And who is being prepared before the need becomes urgent?

Inside Cable Bahamas’ leadership development program, those questions are being treated as part of long-term planning.

Keshala Knowles – Vice President, HR, Cable Bahamas
“Some of my mentors, like I’ve shared before, were not HR mentors. They were persons in the business who told me, who taught me about operations or finance or, depending on the industry I was in, you know, food and beverage or gas activities. But get the right mentors because they will be the persons who will challenge you. They will help you to understand business, and they will connect you with people who you may never have been connected with before.”

That kind of visibility matters in any business.

When teams operate in silos, leaders can miss information, duplicate effort, or make decisions without understanding how one part of the organization affects another.

The leadership development program brings together employees from different functions and leadership levels, creating space for them to better understand not only their own roles, but the wider business around them.

Ernesto Uscher – Partner & Managing Dir., The RBL Group
“The other point is to make sure that we can align that leadership development with the business strategy. Make sure that leadership development doesn’t come in a vacuum, but it’s clearly connected to the growth strategy, to the culture, and to the operational excellence that the organization is looking at.”

For business owners, the warning is clear.

Leadership development cannot begin only when someone resigns, retires, or a crisis forces change.

By then, the business may already be reacting.

International leadership consultant Ernesto Uscher says leadership development has to be connected to strategy, culture, and operational performance, not treated as a separate exercise.

Ernesto Uscher – Partner & Managing Dir., The RBL Group
“The other piece is to see what they need in the future roles. Try to understand how these high-potential leaders can be groomed for key roles in the organization, while ensuring that they’re doing what they have to do right now in the right way.”

It is one more lesson emerging from Cable Bahamas’ year-long leadership development program, and one that applies to businesses of every size: Growth depends on more than today’s leader. It depends on whether tomorrow’s leaders are already being prepared.

For owners, Uscher says that means leadership development is not a luxury, it is a form of business protection.

Ernesto Uscher – Partner & Managing Dir., The RBL Group
“So, for companies that are not doing this, basically, you’re losing a great opportunity to keep on growing. There’s a phrase that we use a lot, which is, organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get.”