Filling the Leadership Pipeline. Robert B. Kaiser

said could be measured in the reduction of the numbers of leaders hired away by other companies. Companies reported measuring the value of retaining future leaders in terms of reductions in the costs of recruiting replacement leaders. They did not attempt to measure the value of keeping leaders in terms of opportunity costs, such as the increased operational efficiencies resulting from avoiding having key positions vacant for a period of time, or minimizing the timeline for integrating outside hires. (See chapter 3 for the extra time it takes to assimilate an external hire.) Promotion of future leaders into key roles was the next most frequently mentioned way to measure ROI, followed by shorter learning curves for the future leaders when they are promoted into new key roles, and fewer costly mistakes as they learned the ropes in new roles.