Companies focusing on fast-track group.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Future leadership - Brief article

It's becoming widely recognized that the biggest source of an organization's future leaders are its own high-potential employees. As a result, companies are more frequently developing these fast-trackers into future senior managers than they are promoting current executives into upper management or recruiting leaders from outside.

That's among the chief conclusions of a survey by Right Management Consultants, the Philadelphia-based career transition and organizational consulting firm. Right polled human resources managers at 168 companies nationwide.

According to Right, almost eight out of 10 (77 percent) companies said they don't have enough successors to senior-level managers already working in their organizations--raising a pressing need to develop or acquire their next generation of leaders.

Forty-three percent of companies are providing the necessary developmental...