The Hudson Leadership Survey 2015 asked Asia-Pac HR business leaders to rank their people priorities for both 2015 and 2016. For both years, leadership development topped the list.

Asia is not alone. The 2016 Global Human Capital Trends report by Deloitte revealed that more than half of surveyed executives (56%) report that their companies are not ready to meet leadership needs.

While investment in leadership development has grown by 10% since 2015, progress has been uneven. In fact, more than one in five companies (21%) have no leadership programs at all.

In many ways, the lack of leadership that leads to a lack of development is a self-fulfilling prophecy. This shortcoming could boil down to a lack of vision, investment and direction.

Lack of Vision

In the Deloitte report, only 7% of executives state that their companies have accelerated leadership programs for Millennials. Without leadership pushing for progress from the top, the likelihood of further advancements will be diminished.

Lack of Investment

It’s much harder for organisations to justify assigning budget to leadership programs without tangible evidence of results. Of course, once new leadership talent emerges and proves their worth, these success stories can be trumpeted and lead to further investment.

Lack of Direction

Even if an organization has a plan and knows what the ultimate goal is, it is quite another thing to sustain the focus required to arrive at the destination. Often the best way to maintain direction in a company is by osmosis through the layers of management from the top, through middle and right to the bottom. A chain of command is only ever as strong as its weakest link, so without enough leadership talent in the first place, it makes the challenge even harder.

Companies without a vision for developing leaders, without the investment appetite to pay for such a strategy and without the direction to focus on this goal are ultimately going to be left behind their competition.

In the supply and demand economy we are faced with today, true leaders are scarce. Time to grow your own.