Why Every AEC Firm Needs a Leadership and Specialist Pipeline | Kent Jonasen of the Leadership Pipeline Institute

In this episode of the Smarter by Design podcast, I’m joined by Kent Jonasen, CEO of the Leadership Pipeline Institute and co-author of the third edition of The Leadership Pipeline as well as author of The Specialist Pipeline. Kent has spent decades helping organizations rethink leadership development, succession planning, and the challenge of scaling expertise inside complex companies. 

His work starts from a deceptively simple premise: leadership is not leadership. 

Each transition—from leading yourself to leading others, leading leaders, leading functions, and eventually leading an enterprise—is fundamentally a different job that requires different skills, different priorities, and even different values.

But this conversation goes far beyond leadership development.

Many organizations unintentionally build systems where leadership becomes the only visible path for growth, recognition, and advancement. Specialists—deep technical experts, practitioners, strategists, and problem-solvers—often feel forced toward management roles simply to continue progressing in their careers. Over time, this creates frustration, weak leadership transitions, and the gradual loss of highly valuable expertise.

Kent and I explore why organizations need both leadership pipelines and specialist pipelines working together. We discuss:

• Why leadership transitions so often fail

• The hidden importance of discovering and aligning with your “work values” in career progression

• Why many specialists feel alienated inside traditional organizations

• The difference between knowledge experts and knowledge leaders

• How companies accidentally push people into management roles they never truly wanted

• Why specialist career paths need more than just new titles

• How dual leadership and specialist pipelines create healthier long-term organizational design

Along the way, we connect these ideas directly to architecture, engineering, and construction firms, where specialized expertise is often the core engine of competitive advantage. From healthcare planners to sustainability experts to technical design specialists, many AEC firms are wrestling with how to scale expertise, accelerate development, and reduce dependency on a shrinking number of senior experts.

If you lead an AEC firm, oversee learning and development, manage technical teams, or are thinking about succession planning and long-term capability building, this episode offers a powerful framework for rethinking how careers evolve inside organizations. More importantly, it raises a deeper question: what if building a stronger company starts not just with developing better leaders, but with designing better systems for developing expertise itself?

▶ Watch or Listen

Watch or listen to this episode via YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

📺 🎧 YouTube
📺 🎧 Spotify
📺 🎧 Apple Podcasts

📚 Show Notes + Resources

• The Leadership Pipeline

• The Performance Pipeline

• Leadership Pipeline Institute YouTube Channel

---

📃 Episode Transcript

This transcript was lightly edited for clarity.

Chris: Kent, you are the co-founder and global CEO of the Leadership Pipeline Institute, which describes itself as the official research institute and global provider of solutions based on the "Pipeline" books. So you sit at the intersection of leadership development, talent, succession, and organizational capability. Many people know you for your book, "The Leadership Pipeline," and from your organization's book, which is now in its third edition.

What I've liked about it — I was introduced first by one client, and then a second client, and then a third client told me about that book — it helps firms think systematically about leadership transition and what it means to take on each of those new roles in leadership. But you've written a follow-up book called "The Specialist Pipeline," and that's what we want to dig into today, talking about winning the war for specialist talent.

For our industry — architecture, engineering, construction — these firms are full of deep specialists. They're healthcare experts, sustainability experts, lab planners, data center experts, bridge engineers. I can keep going on and on, hyper-specialized. So, the challenge that we face in our industry is scaling that specialist capability fast enough to reduce dependency on a small number of experts.

We've got a bunch of folks retiring. We want to accelerate the development of the next generation. We want to preserve quality and stay competitive in this really fast-moving environment. So, I'd love to start, if we could, with the Leadership Pipeline Institute and who you are, and just give us grounding. Why are you writing about the leadership? Why are you writing about specialist pipelines?

Kent: Well, I got exposed to the leadership pipeline concept back in 2004 — so that's twenty-two years ago. I was, at that time, deputy head of human resources in a large international container carrier company, Maersk. And we had all kinds of leadership development initiatives. We had leadership competence models and so on, everything you want to have, but it was hard for us to measure real impact on what we did. Behavioral change — that was hard for us, and we were not happy about that because we actually had solid funding in our company. Compared to other human resource functions, we were well off in terms of business support to what we did.

We came across the leadership pipeline concept, and when we grasped it, when we started translating it into our reality together with one of the authors, it actually turned out to be a huge success moving that into the company. Implementing it in terms of a framework and in terms of our development strategy, how we develop leaders. And it was those four years implementing that in Maersk — or spearheading the implementation anyway, but hands-on — that inspired me to reach out to one of the authors of the Leadership Pipeline book and then start up this company. So back to your question, that's where it came from, the leadership pipeline idea.

Chris: So, you liked the author's book so much that you thought there should be a company around it to help deliver the message to more companies. Is that right?

Kent: Yes. Well, Maersk at that time was about 100,000 people and 15,000 leaders. We were looking for an external provider where we could just plug and play the leadership pipeline. But the three authors, they were executive consultants, so they didn't have a company that could support developing 15,000 leaders. They did executive work, design work, and so on. And my idea was, when I started working with it, we had to develop our own solutions attached to the pipeline. The business idea was just: I think that the leadership pipeline concept is an evergreen.

And the other thing is, wow, if I could have had a white-labeled solution that I could just plug and play and customize instead of building everything from scratch, that would have been very attractive for us at that time as a company. So, I had the idea it must be attractive for everybody else, too. That's how the idea was found to found this company.

Chris: That's a classic entrepreneurial story.

Can you, at a 50,000-foot level for people that haven't read "The Leadership Pipeline" and aren't familiar with it, what is "The Leadership Pipeline"?

Kent: So really, the leadership pipeline — if you understand two things, then you appreciate the entire pipeline. So it's a two-hundred-and-eighty-page book, but there are only two things you need to appreciate, then you get it all. One thing is: leadership is not leadership. The other thing is: whenever people move from one leadership role to another, they go through a transition. They need to go through a transition, not just in skills, but in skills, time allocation, and work values.

So let's take number one. How often have we heard somebody ask the question: Is she a good leader? Is he a good leader? Are they a good leader? But that's a totally wrong question, and that's where everything goes wrong in any company. That's when you ask that question because you're implying that leadership is leadership. But the leadership work to be done in a leading others role versus a leading leaders role, versus a leader of a function, versus a business leader, versus an enterprise leader, and whatever leadership levels you have, is fundamentally different. It's like two different jobs. It's like going from leading others to leading leaders — it's like going from operations to sales. Of course you bring some experience, but it's a total new job.

This is where many companies — this is the key reason for many companies finding us interesting. That's when we share these simple stories about what happens in a company when you just talk about leadership as leadership, and all of a sudden, they see themselves, all the challenges they have in development, in succession planning, in leader-led development. They just see it coming out.

So that's one thing you have to appreciate: leadership is not leadership. The work to be done for leading others, leading leaders, functional leader, and so on, is fundamentally different. Now, when people then move from one role to another — first from employee to leading others, then to leading leaders — you need to support them in adjusting their skills, time allocation, and work values.

Chris: Your skills, your time. What was the second one?

Kent: Time application. And let's spend a couple of minutes on this because it's basically the same — when we start talking about specialist pipeline, it's not just a follow-up book, it's pretty much a twin book.

Anyway, the transition. So skills everybody can appreciate: "Oh, I need new skills." Okay, great. But more important, the time application. There are things you need to stop doing, start doing, and continue doing. And most often it's the stop doing that's tricky for people, because the things you have to stop doing are the things you like doing. Those are the things that have brought you success. It's probably the things that caused you to get your promotion, and now I ask you to stop doing it, or at least do less of it.

Chris: Yeah. As an example, Kent, what's something that you commonly see when someone moves from employee to leading others that they just won't let go of?

Kent: Well, for instance, you can take a sales manager. Sales managers are quite typical here. So a salesperson becoming sales manager — they tend to stick to their clients. They don't want to let go of their clients. Really, your role is now to make your best client somebody else's best client. But how do you convince a salesperson about that? And even if they keep clients, that's also fine, but start bringing your team members. Don't go out with your best buddy friends in the different client company. No, you have to at least bring somebody so they can learn from you in those meetings, and you have to bring somebody so you give them feedback on how they behave. The leading others should never do this alone. But okay, keep some clients, but bring people. But it's like, "I got my old group of clients, we used to do this, we used to do that, we have known each other for four years." Yeah, but now you're a team leader.

Chris: A very close friend of mine did exactly the thing you're saying. They went from the best salesperson to becoming the sales manager, and they hated it because they thought, "I'm still going to be selling, but now I get more money and I get more responsibility." But ultimately, they didn't want to do that job, and they went back down to becoming a sales leader again because they realized that transition wasn't for them.

Kent: Micromanagement, the same. I'm used to being in control of all my output. When I become a team leader, I'm not in control of all output because there are other people delivering output. But to stay in control, I start micromanaging.

Chris: Versus finding success through others — that's what you have to learn how to do.

Kent: Yeah. And not because I'm a bad person — I'm just a human being.

So leading others to leading leaders — that's also a terrible situation because even if you've become a good enough leading others, you learn how to coach your specialist, develop your specialist, assess performance. But when you become a leader of leaders, you have to start selecting leaders, developing leaders, assessing performance of leaders. So you see, a specialist by heart and mind can actually go far as a team leader, as long as they lead specialists. But if you promote them into the next level, everything falls apart. Because what they do good enough here, they're not supposed to do up there at the leading leaders level.

And this is the challenge when you're not differentiating. Then my question — you can ask the company. You see a lot of companies, you see a lot of executives. Try and ask them: "When you got your first leading leaders role, who set leading leaders right? When you moved from leading others to leading leaders, when you got that job, who sat down with you and told you, 'Okay, this is a total new job. This is what you have to stop doing. This is what you have to start doing. This is what you need to continue doing. By the way, here are the new skills you need. Here's the time application. This is what you need to value to be successful.'" And everybody will say, "No one."

Chris: No one.

Kent: No one. And by the way, myself inclusive. I got this book in 2004, as I said. It was my head of talent reporting to me, coming back from a conference in the US saying to me, "Hey, Kent, I think you should read this chapter about being a leading leaders."

Everything I could do wrong, I was doing wrong, and all the consequences were described in this little chapter of 20 pages. But I looked at it and said, "If just somebody had told me that, then at least half of it I could get right. I'm not perfect. Maybe I could even get to 75%, but half of it — if just somebody had told me, 'Hey, Kent, by the way, it's a different job you're going into.'" In my mind, I'm just leading more people. So it was not a new job — I was just leading more people.

Chris: So you saw it as scaling but not transitioning, in your mind?

Kent: So if you can appreciate: never ask the question, is she a good leader? But ask the question, is she a good leading others? Is she a good leading leaders? Is he a good functional leader? Then you have come far. And if you can then appreciate that when people make this move, they fundamentally need to change what they work, what they value, what they like doing.

Chris: They have to change that and adjust that, otherwise they're not gonna like their job. So they have to change the skills, change how they spend their time, but then also the work values piece — what they like, how they determine their value — is that what that means?

Kent: What they value doing. What do you like doing? So if you can't change that, when you become the sales leader, a good day for you in the job is not when you close a deal. The best day on your job is when somebody else closes a deal. But if you can't make that transition in how you value things, then you're never going to be a successful leading others.

On the other hand, if you can change that, guess what? Then you'll spend tons of time developing people, selecting people, assessing performance, all the people stuff. You'll spend a lot of time on that because you truly value when it's your direct reports who are successful in closing a deal. But it's just a simple example. The same thing for leading leaders — they have to value leading through another layer. They have to value not being out in the front line. Instead of missing being out in the front line, they have to value, "Wow, I'm not in this hectic front line anymore. Now I can step up and lead through four other team leaders."

But most leading leaders feel frustrated sitting there because they're taken away from the real action.

Chris: They miss being on the court playing. They miss being an athlete actually playing. Now they're layers back in the management of the team. What's a really good day for somebody leading leaders? What does that look like?

Kent: Yeah, here we go. So leading leaders comes home from work, and then the spouse will ask, "Oh, did you have a good day on the job today?" And this leading leaders will respond, "Yeah, you know what? I was part of two significant decisions today, and there's a good chance that one of them can get me fired." Can you feel it? That's a good day.

Most leading leaders cannot feel that. Trust me, when I'm talking to them, they say, "What?" I say, "Yeah, but think about it. You know that you are part of making decisions." "Yes, of course." "But why would you ever be part of making a decision where there's no risk? You can delegate that to other people." So a good day for you is when you are only part of decisions where there's a risk. I was just stretching that risk a bit, but the core point is: delegate all decisions where you're quite certain what the answer is, then let somebody else decide there. You should be part of decisions where there's uncertainty, where there's a risk, where we could be wrong. That's where you step in and become part of the decision-making. But if you don't really enjoy that and love that, if you prefer the other types of decisions where you know you're right, then you will end up delaying decisions that are tricky.

Chris: So you're the wrong person for the job because you're not comfortable with putting your name on a risky decision.

Kent: True. You may even want to delay it until circumstances make the decision for you. And this is what slows down execution in a company. So the leading leaders play a key role in speeding up or slowing down execution in a company.

So one thing is the leading leaders themselves, but another thing — when the company starts looking at why they would need a leadership pipeline — is that it's also a performance pipeline, it's also an execution pipeline. It's about how do we get things done at the different layers in the company? How do we touch each other but without overlapping each other? And how do people understand what is my role in getting things done and executing the strategy? That's the key to success for a company. But anyway, you asked what the leadership pipeline is all about. It's about appreciating that leadership is not leadership, and there's a transition to be made in work values, time application, and skills — with work values being the most important.

Chris: Work values — of the three, that's the most important one? Because that will determine how you spend your time and the skills you develop?

Kent: Yes. You can go out and interview 10 — let's say you talk to an HR person in a company and say, "Hey, could I talk to 10 leaders that you say aren't really coaching leaders?" "Yeah, here you are." So you get 10 leaders, and then you ask them, "Do you think it's important to coach?" "Yes." "Do you know what coaching is?" "Yes, that's asking questions instead of providing answers." And now you start wondering, why did this HR person send them to me? I asked for somebody who didn't coach. They have the skills. They know what it is, but they're not using the skills because they don't find value in asking questions. They find value in answering questions. They don't find joy in asking clever questions. They find joy in knowing better, knowing more, hence being able to answer the question. That's what makes them feel, "Wow, now I know why I'm the leader." So that's why work values are more important than skills. Because you may have the skills, but if you have not adjusted your work values, you're likely not gonna use them.

Chris: It feels like this is a diagnostic. Like, I now understand — I can see people in this pipeline and understand why things aren't working because that person in that role doesn't value the thing, therefore doesn't spend their time building the skills. So there's a realignment that happens once you can see this model. But then going forward, it gives you language to talk to somebody who wants to now lead others or someone who wants to lead leaders, and be able to say, "This is what you're going to have to value. This is what you're going to have to start. This is what you're going to have to stop." Are you sure you want this job? And also, am I sure this person can do this job? Am I close?

Kent: Yeah. You're putting the words very well here. Could you envisage a company without a finance architecture, without a finance ledger, without a cost budget process, without a capital allocation process, without currency exchange rates? Of course we couldn't. We've known for whatever 50 years we need ERP systems. Why? Because it allows us to talk about money in the same way. Now, what the leadership pipeline does, it provides you with this talent ledger. Later, we talk about specialists — when you combine these two, you have a talent ledger. So now you have a common way of talking about things.

Think about it: if you called one of your colleagues somewhere in your company and asked, "Hey, I'm looking for a leading others for a role over here. Would you have anybody who's ready for that?" And they say, "Yeah, I have two people." Can I trust you? Not that you're lying to me, but do we have the same exchange rate? In finance it's nice having currency exchanges — you know what a Canadian dollar versus a US dollar versus a euro is worth. But do you know what a leader versus a leader is? Do we have the same way of assessing what good looks like? This is what the leadership pipeline provides you with — this people leadership ledger, a clear performance portrait for each leadership layer in the organization.

Chris: I love that. And it makes me go back to the very first thing you said, which was when you were in-house in HR, you had a bunch of budget, you were doing things, you had support, and yet you had no way to measure if you were being successful. So, given that you had budget, support, and programs, why did you feel like you needed to make a change?

Kent: It was two things, two main things. First of all, we were growing significantly year by year at that time in Maersk, and in spite of all this support to development and so on, we were unable — at least we struggled — to develop a sufficient number of qualified leaders to keep up with the business growth. Most often when we were looking at new positions, we didn't have three candidates, we had one candidate, and we had been looking for that candidate. We managed to always fill jobs — we didn't use search companies much — but it was one candidate every time, and that's not good enough. I think an HR function should also be measured on always having three candidates ready.

Chris: Three internally developed candidates, you're saying?

Kent: Yeah. If you want to go external, do, but do it by choice, not by need. That's a relevant KPI for an HR function, I think. Anyway, we put that on ourselves. The other thing was all that training. When we looked at performance reviews on leadership, we had a distinct leadership performance review alongside the business objectives performance review. But when we looked there, it's not like we could see that these people who had been on our training programs performed better than those who had not been on the training program. We couldn't get a causality between sending people to training and them ending up performing better as leaders. And that tells us something — the leadership programs are not working, in my opinion. Because people going through the training should statistically improve more than the rest over time. We couldn't see that when we measured it. The programs were highly popular, great scores, high NPS scores, and there were many good things in them, but the outcome was not there.

That's what I, together with a couple of people in our corporate HR function, decided to change. We didn't come up with a solution. And then by chance, this book ended up on my table, and that turned out to be the one thing. I would say it's not like we stopped everything we did, but it's like we got these fundamental transition programs in place, and by helping people make the true transition, it actually increased the value of all the other training. Because they had been trained in a lot of things, but they didn't use it.

Chris: So when you say leadership is not leadership, I'm inferring that those programs were a little bit more one-size-fits-all — somebody learning how to lead leaders getting the same materials as somebody leading others.

Kent: Yeah. And now, knowing better, I can still feel bad about telling the story from then. We had programs based on titles.

Chris: Manager program, general manager program, director program, VP program.

But guess what? Our title structure was based on a salary benchmark system — using Mercer, Hay, and so on, these job grading systems that are used for salary benchmarking. It gives these grades, and it's so easy to attach a title to grades, and then it's so easy to attach training to a title. But Mercer and Hay have developed a great salary benchmarking system, but they have never claimed it's going to translate into a great leadership development system.

Kent: They have never claimed that. But that's just what many HR functions — including us at that time — did, because it seemed right. It was easy to explain. But the problem is, on this director program, there would be both individual contributors, leading others, leading leaders, and maybe an organizational manager. And when you start mixing so many leadership layers, you have to chunk up to make it relevant to everybody. Train them in their exact job because we have different jobs. So you chunk up and you make the training more general, high level. You make it case-based and simulations instead of really training people in the job to be done. So that's what we did. High-rated programs, but the impact was not there. And that's what you can change when you start saying, "No, let's take 20 leading others. Let's take 20 leading leaders and train them in the job to be done."

Chris: Because we can start with values, and then you can work all the way backward because it's the same for everybody versus a mixed group. I love that.

Development of the Specialist Pipeline

Chris: Let's talk about the leap into the specialist pipeline — where that came from. First of all, thank you for being willing to talk about some of the things that you weren't doing well and the things that you improved. I don't think you were alone in doing some of those things — obviously you've built a company around it. I love that the seed of the idea for the company came from this experience. I'm wondering if you have a similar seed for the idea for the specialist pipeline.

Kent: Yeah, that's an equally terrible experience. In 2004, I get exposed to the leadership pipeline book. We get excited. We do our work together with one of the co-authors at that time, and everything is ready to go to executive decision in 2005. Let's roll out the leadership pipeline concept and these programs and so on. But at that time, as I said, Maersk was a container carrier company — actually, Maersk was a conglomerate. There was something called Maersk Oil and Gas, something called Maersk Contractors, and then multiple other companies. It was a true conglomerate. And then the two CEOs — the CEO from Contractors, they're renting out drilling rigs in the oil industry — they said, pretty much using these words, "Now we again launch a big initiative for leaders. What about our specialists?"

That was in 2004. And Chris, think about it, many companies are not even saying that today. They said that in 2004. At that time, it was very annoying for my agenda. Today, I can appreciate they were way ahead of their time.

Chris: It was annoying because you're like, "Hold on, I'm still trying to get this leaders thing right. What are you talking about specialists?"

Kent: Yeah. But they said that, and it was discussed, and we were sent out and told, "Look, you have to come up with some kind of a solution for specialists too, before we launch this leadership thing."

Chris: Was it a similar challenge — like with leaders, it was hard to fill roles internally, and it was hard to know if training was working? Was that their concern about specialists?

Kent: No, it was the same, but they were even more bold. So listen — two stories. One of them said, "Look, Kent" — I remember it like yesterday, sitting at that meeting, because we were pretty much thrown back one year and it took a year before we could move on with the other project. Anyway, they said, "Look, Kent, any leader who leaves my company, I can replace them tomorrow. And if I can, then I can just merge two departments — the business goes on. But I can name frontline experts and specialists in our business — if they don't come to work tomorrow, the project stops. You have to understand they are a bit more important to me." And then in another business unit they said, "Oh, that's a good point, actually. If we took one of our big countries, Netherlands, the country manager didn't come to work tomorrow, the business would just continue."

And there was a discussion — how long could this person stay away? Six months? And the business would continue.

Chris: It would just have momentum, like systems and all that kind of thing.

Kent: Yeah, containers are booked and the schedule for vessels is already in place, so business is moving. There's a management team taking care of things. Fine, they don't do a new strategy, but business would keep moving. And then he said, but at the same time, the person responsible for stacking the containers on the carriers — if that person didn't come to work one day, then nothing would happen. Everything would stop, and that's very costly having carriers just waiting to be loaded. So they could see the same point. And they also chipped in and said, "Yeah, we have this senior specialist in ship paint," and they started talking about how if he could be part of developing and improving the ship paint, then maybe the vessels could be in water one more year without being taken out for repair and maintenance. That's millions of dollars saved. If you can get a better paint, you can lower the friction in the water, you can save fuel — billions of dollars. So they all of a sudden agreed, "These specialists are important, so Kent, go back and come up with something."

Anyway, we went back, our team, and after having sewn our wounds, we started the work. And our first take was, what if we could just do a specialist pipeline? But we didn't know if we could, of course. So we went out and interviewed both specialists and executives and so on, and it actually — I learned so much about specialists at that time, and I got really excited about specialists. So we came up with a model for how you could actually have a specialist pipeline and a leadership pipeline and so on. Guess what happened then? The decision was: we start with the leadership pipeline, and I never heard back on the specialist pipeline.

Chris: Because it just took too much time or it was too...

Kent: Yeah, no, it was done. It was ready also. But the decision was, should we do both? No, let's start with one thing, and let's start with the leadership. And then the next two years when I was there, I didn't hear back. Nobody called me and said, "Okay, now it's time for specialist." It just moved on, and that's what often happens. Anyway, I left Maersk in 2008 to start up this company. Of course, the first two or three years were quite tough because of the debt crunch in 2008. I started up this company in May 2008, and in September, everything stopped in the market when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

Chris: I started mine in February 2009, so I understand your story quite well.

Kent: How about that? Anyway, then in 2014, 2015, some of our leadership pipeline clients started bringing up, "What are we gonna do with the specialists?" And they talked to us about it because we were successful with what we did on leaders, and they couldn't find other vendors who had some great concept. I said, "Well, we don't have a concept. We have some thoughts of course, because it's not like I forgot what I learned in Maersk about specialists." But then we teamed up with six large international companies and said, "Look, we don't have what you're asking for, but we can develop it. And I want to write a book about it — a specialist pipeline book." And they said, "Yeah, but we can't wait five years." Then we need to be part of it — you need to test it out as we go along because right now we have nothing, so whatever you come up with is probably better than what we don't have.

So we had the opportunity to start working with companies even though we had not tested these training programs or this framework anywhere else — whereas that's what our clients would expect on the leadership pipeline, where we come with so much experience.

Chris: Can I stop you there for a second? So you had an idea for a specialist pipeline. There was the leadership thing, that's what you executed at Maersk. Then you started the company, and you were doing leadership from 2008 to 2014, 2015. Did at some point your mind say, "Let's bring this specialist thing back"? Like, "No, there's a market — people are coming to us for leadership." Can you talk about that a little bit? It seems like you had an insight that you just put on the shelf for almost 10 years.

Kent: Yes, I did. Because we started up Leadership Pipeline and that took off, and that's where we built a solid business. But then our clients started discussing with us what we could do for the specialists. So it was the clients who started asking us, and eventually I said, "All right. Let's give it a shot."

Chris: What were you hesitant about?

Kent: Because when you run a business, you have a business model, you have a product. A completely different production line. It's like in the old days with producing wind turbines — when they were smaller, you could produce two megawatt or four megawatt, but they're actually two different things. You need different factories. You build up a parallel business — and why do that? There's a billion-dollar market for the leadership pipeline. Why then start focusing on another product? Because you're really stretching your resources and your time. That was my hesitation, from a pure running-a-business perspective.

Chris: So why do it?

Kent: There were two things to it. First of all, discussing it in our company, we got convinced that we would actually stand stronger by having this twin product because many companies were already doing a lot in the leadership arena. Many companies already worked with Leadership Pipeline, just not with us, because the book came out already in 2001, so it was already adopted by a lot of companies on their own or with help from other consultancy companies. So they didn't feel they needed us for that. Our way into these companies would be through the specialist pipeline, and the business idea was that when they saw how we worked with the specialist pipeline, they'd realize they weren't really harvesting the leadership pipeline, and then they'd work with us on that too. That became the business idea.

And then on the professional side — at that time, I was not part of the Leadership Pipeline book personally. I was only invited into that in 2020 or so.

Chris: The third edition?

Kent: Yeah, the third edition. So this was also my opportunity to take some of my knowledge and broaden it out to people. I remember Stephen Drodla — he said to me the first time I met him, one of the co-authors of the Leadership Pipeline book: "Kent, when I wrote that book together with the two others, I thought if just one person would buy it and really get something out of it, then I'm all happy." And I was inspired by that thinking — that writing a book is really about taking a lot of your own knowledge, putting it in a book, and then other people will get access to that knowledge, and they can get a better life, a better career, create a better life for specialists in this case. I got consumed by that idea. That was the professional perspective why I ended up as a CEO saying, "Yes, let's spend time on this." And then there was also the commercial aspect of it.

Chris: And you take a little bit of joy from putting some risk into the business?

Kent: When I got six companies to sign up immediately, I didn't really feel there was much risk. The only risk I had was the opportunity risk in terms of spending time on A instead of spending time on B.

Chris: Exactly.

Retaining Specialists

Chris: So I'm guessing — because when you were describing the title-based training, you described a scenario where at director level it might be an individual contributor, it might be somebody leading others, it might be somebody leading leaders — is part of the reason your clients pulled you into this because they had similar challenges? Like, "Okay, we know what to do with the leaders that are in this room, but what do we do about that director individual contributor? How do we develop them?" Is that part of it — because you're only solving half the problem with the leadership pipeline?

Kent: Yeah. The challenge that companies faced, and that I got exposed to, is that specialists and experts feel alienated. Why are they alienated? Because leaders get it all. Leaders get training, leaders get bigger titles, leaders go to offsites, there's an annual executive leadership summit — there are all kinds of things for leaders. Specialists feel alienated from that perspective. Now, some of those specialists just stay alienated, but others decide, "I don't want to be alienated, so I'm going to pursue a leadership role." But that may not be good — not for them, not for the company, not for the team that they're going to lead. But it's the only way they see a possible career in the company. The only career path they can see is either a project manager role or a formal people manager role. So that's what they're gonna pursue.

Another thing is that many specialists would in exit interviews say, "Well, I just..." "Why are you leaving?" "Because I don't feel I develop here in the company." "Okay, but you're leaving for another job that is the same as the one you have here." "Yeah, but it's in another company, so at least I learn something from that."

Chris: Hmm.

Kent: But that's a very bad reason for a company to lose a person.

Chris: The person stacking the containers leaving for that reason — that's a big problem.

Kent: If at least they got double salary — okay, fair enough, good luck with this job. But going to pretty much the same salary, pretty much the same job, just in a different place — come on, stay here. So companies are experiencing these challenges. And then I want to supplement it with one of the stories also outlined in the Specialist Pipeline book. As part of the research I did where I spoke to hundreds of specialists in connection with writing the book, one of the questions I always asked was, "Think back to the last time you got a new title." "Okay." "What was different in your job the day before and the day after?" Nothing.

And here's the point. What does it mean to make a career? Because many companies say, "But we have a career path — we have a title framework for the specialist." Yeah, but you don't have a career just because you get new titles. Making a career is getting an adjusted job, a new job, a revised job, a more stretched job, getting exposed to new things. That's making a career. So making a career is not just getting new titles. People may be happy the day they get them, but then the day after: "I now got a new title, and then what?"

So that's my point. When you create a career in the leadership pipeline, it's very clear: individual contributor becomes leading others — new job. Leading leaders — new job. Functional leader — new job. It's very visible. But if you don't have something similar on the specialist side, just a title structure, they don't look at that as a new job. That's what's missing on the specialist pipeline side. That's what we were asked about. Can we do something like that? And we said, "Maybe," because we didn't want to create an artificial pipeline that by design had to match the leadership pipeline thinking.

Another interesting story — I was sitting in a company where we had implemented the leadership pipeline, and at a lunch with about 15 HR VPs, one of them asked me, "Hey, do you have something that can help matrix managers?" And as a good consultant back in 2011, you say, "Yes." And then you ask, "So what is a matrix manager for you?" And it turned out a matrix manager in this company was somebody who was product responsible. It was a 30,000-person company, with 200 people who owned certain products — they had many products — and they were supposed to drive the success of these products across geographies, across the value chain, across whatever. And I said, "Okay, so they're sitting there alone, but that's more like a specialist role, isn't it? An expert role. It's not a leadership role." "No, that's right," he said, "but we cannot attract people to the job if we don't call it matrix leader or matrix manager." So there you see —

Chris: So they have 200 people in that product team, but they don't directly lead them?

Kent: No. Those 200 people are not people managers. They own a product portfolio that they have to take care of and push the success of across the world. But the point is they are probably knowledge experts or knowledge leaders, or something in between, if we take the specialist pipeline terminology. But they couldn't call it that because it was so unattractive in this company to pursue a specialist career that even though it's a very attractive job in many ways for some people, they wouldn't take it if it was associated with being a specialist.

Chris: So it's like respect, pay, all those kinds of things just don't compete.

Kent: I would say respect, because pay — moving in there from a leadership role, you could maintain your salary. It was more the respect. But if you make a drawing of the leadership pipeline, how cool is it to move from leading leaders to individual contributor? Visually, it's not cool.

Chris: 'Cause you're going —

Kent: Downwards. Yeah.

But if you then make this drawing of the two pipelines next to each other, it becomes visible — moving from a leading others role into a knowledge leader role can be a promotion in terms of impact, in terms of complexity. But if you don't have this drawing, then visually it's not attractive to move from a people manager role to a specialist role.

And going back to your very first words in our conversation — this thing about making that attractive for specialists and grooming specialists through the specialist pipeline. What we have experienced, definitely in Europe, is that people have to stay in the workforce longer and longer. There are so many people who, when they get to their mid-50s, may have been people managers for many years. And of course I can't put everybody into one box, but when they get to the mid-50s: "I've been a people manager for 20 years. I actually like the company I'm in, I like my colleagues, I like what I'm doing, but I've had enough of leading other people." Having these conversations about non-performance, salary, all the HR stuff — "I'm done with that. If I could just do what I'm good at." But for them to move over to a specialist role, you need to make it very, very explicitly attractive to do so. Because what we have experienced is that people who do it at that age, they do it by moving to another company. Why? Because then it's not a visible demotion. But inside their own company, they feel it's a visible demotion. People will start talking: "What went wrong? They must not have been a good leader after all." But if you move to another company, you don't have that conversation because you've never been a people manager there. But I don't want to lose this talent. And if you don't want to lose it, you need to make being a specialist attractive.

Levels in the Specialist Pipeline

Chris: Let's talk about that then. Let's talk about the steps up the specialist pipeline so we can start figuring out how the two things come together. What's the equivalent of an individual contributor at the bottom, then it goes to being a knowledge expert — what are the different levels?

Kent: And here's a story I would like to share, one that impacted me a lot and that I've used in many companies who are going down the wrong street. When we started working on this specialist pipeline in Maersk, I was in Maersk Oil and Gas talking to the chief operating officer. And, naive and unknowledgeable about specialists as I was, I started talking about specialists — they hired a lot of PhDs — so I said, "So they come in as PhDs, and then they are specialists, and then..." Then he stopped me. He said, "Kent, stop. You don't get it. You're not a specialist just because you have a PhD." I said, "Okay," but he said, "Yeah, he knows something about something, but then he starts working in our company, and that's when he starts learning about real life and how to apply that PhD knowledge and so on." So the first two years, a PhD in our organization coming directly from university — they are not a go-to person. They do work, and they do important work, and we pay them well, but they are not go-to people. It's not like other people come to them and ask, "Hey, can you help me here?" Because they don't have the bandwidth to support other people — they're still getting their hands around their own domain of expertise. Then, after a couple of years, some of them will become go-to people because they develop a sufficient knowledge and understanding of their domain of expertise and how it's applied across the company. They become someone that people like to come to. I say this is the first specialist level. He pretty much drew the specialist pipeline for me.

The story he told me about specialist journeys and how it works — it's 80% of what you find in the book. He really inspired this. Of course, I didn't know that at that time, because at that time it was one story. But when I then started testing that story up against hundreds and hundreds of other specialist careers, it became visible.

And here's the point: when are you a specialist? Most companies — 70% — of all their people are employees, professionals, associates, whatever you wanna call them. They're not people managers, but they're also not specialists. The worst mistake you can make if you want to make it attractive to be a specialist is when you say, "Either you're a people manager or you're a specialist," because then you've diluted the entire term. Apparently you're a specialist as long as you're just not a people manager. Of course you're not. You have to deserve your right to be named a specialist.

This is actually a tricky point for many organizations we've worked with, because they say, "Oh, but then we have to go out and change that. We've been saying this for 10 years." Yeah, if you want to make it attractive being a specialist. And by the way, it's not true — you're not a specialist just because you're not a people manager. You're an employee, or whatever you wanna call it.

So the first step in the specialist career is when you get your hands around the domain of expertise and start supporting other people. What could that be? An obvious example: in human resources, you have recruiters — people who spend most of their time on recruiting, doing interviews, all kinds of things. There may be a little team taking care of a certain geography of the business. Inside a team of four recruiters, one of them turns out to be smarter than the three others. One of them turns out to have a deeper understanding of the process. One of them turns out to really dive into it and grasp all the tools and processes.

And one day, the team leader goes to that person and says, "Hey, Christopher, I'd like to make you a knowledge expert." And you say, "Okay, what does that entail?" Well, that means that besides doing recruitment as you do today, we need to take out some of your time — you need to spend that time supporting the other team members. I'm still the people manager, but from a pure technical perspective, you need to support your colleagues. You become the go-to person for them. When they're in doubt about how to interpret a psychometric profile, they come to you. When they're in doubt about how to apply a certain recruitment tool or process, they come to you, not me. I can now spend more time on people leadership because I've pushed some of the technical leadership down to you.

This is how you use specialists at the lower level — you make them go-to people for their nearby colleagues and peers.

Chris: Is that person also building tools and processes, or is that a higher level up?

Kent: It would normally be a higher level up. They are doing continuous improvement, and they make sure that — let's say you work in a certain geography or certain part of the business — you find a way of applying company tools in a clever way. For instance, if you have a tool that requires strong internet access when you assess people, there will be certain countries where you can't be sure there's power all the time. So if you operate in those countries, you need to find different ways of applying those tools. But you don't invent new tools — you apply them cleverly wherever you work. You do continuous improvement. You feed back to corporate: "Hey, there's something here not working. There's something here I believe could be better."

Chris: They would involve you in pilots of testing new things to see if it's gonna work, that kind of thing.

Kent: Yeah, exactly. Because as you allude to, the next level — the knowledge leader — in this case within human resources and recruiting, that would be the person who actually designed the recruitment processes. This would be the person who selects and figures out what assessment tools should we be using. That's what they do. This is also the person responsible for pushing these tools out in the organization and getting people to embrace and apply those tools the right way. That would be a knowledge leader doing that.

Chris: So could we go back to our sales example? So you've got this person, let's call her Denise. She goes from being a really great salesperson — my options without a specialist pipeline are to become the sales leader, so I have to lead others. Or in the specialist pipeline, she could become like a sales specialist — start being the mentor and the go-to person for other salespeople, but not be responsible for employee reviews, that kind of thing. But then over time she could develop the sales playbook, the sales training, that kind of intellectual development.

Kent: Yeah. There's a sales process, there are sales tools, there's a pipeline system — Denise is the go-to person. So when new people are hired to the sales team, the people manager will say, "And by the way, if you have any questions about X, Y, and Z, you go to Denise. Ask her, not me. I'm your people manager. Any technical questions about our sales tools and processes, go to Denise." And Denise's performance is also measured not only on her own ability to apply these tools, but also on how well her colleagues are applying them. And this truly marks a new job — moving from being a salesperson to being a knowledge expert means you're not just held accountable for your own sales, you're also held accountable for other people applying the sales tools correctly. That truly marks a new job, and that's my point in giving people a new title. A new title is just a new title. Here, I'm changing the job fundamentally. You now create results through other people.

Chris: Okay.

Kent: You are held accountable for other people doing things right. And some specialists will say, "But it's not my fault if they don't ask me." Yes, it is.

Chris: Hmm.

Kent: What? Yeah. You have to market yourself in the team. You have to make yourself available. You have to make it attractive for people to come to you.

Chris: Yes.

Kent: This is, by the way, one of the most provocative sessions we have when we train knowledge experts. They really feel, "No, people must come to me." And we say, "No, you must make yourself attractive to people. You can't just sit there and be frustrated that people don't come to you. Do something about it."

Chris: How does a knowledge leader make themselves more attractive so that people come to them?

Kent: Knowledge leaders normally work across the organization, not just with their immediate peers. If you have a knowledge leader in sales processes, or take a knowledge leader in safety — they develop the safety processes, they develop the training, they do all kinds of things. But the knowledge leader in safety is going to be measured not just on the quality of the products they develop, but actually on whether people are using them, whether people are taking the safety training, whether they are passing it.

And of course the knowledge leader would say, "But how can you hold me accountable for people doing what they're supposed to do?" I say, "Well, if you're a knowledge leader, that's what it's all about. It's not just about the activity — it's about the result of the activity that you're held accountable for." So the knowledge leader has to get out and build alliances in the organization. They have to make sure that in each of the five regions, I need to find a counterpart there that I work through, because I cannot be everywhere. So I work through counterparts. On each of the drilling rigs, I work through a person there because I'm not on the drilling rig. I've just developed the processes and the tools, and now there's a dedicated person on each drilling rig in our company who makes sure it's implemented and cared for every day. So I need to build relationships because I need people to dedicate time to what's important for me. I need to be good at building trust, building relationships, and — here's one of the work values that's important — they need to value not being the one getting praised for the success.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Kent: Because when you work through influencing other people, you need to give the credit to all these people. That's how you win them over. But then you cannot take the credit afterwards. You need to always give credit to those people who are doing things for you that they didn't have to do. They could have done something else. But you need to value that, because if you value too much that it's you who are being praised, then you cannot win people over and get them to work for you — because you're only influencing them. You don't lead them. You don't have any power. You need to get things done through influence. This is a key thing for knowledge leaders, and this is a big deal when we train them on how to step into that job.

Before I said what's the bigger deal on the knowledge expert — this is the bigger deal on the knowledge leader. Because they say, "Kent, you're telling me I should be held accountable for things that I'm not in control of." And I say, "Yeah. What's the nature of being a knowledge leader?" And then they say, "Well, would you rather only be held accountable for small detailed things?" And then they say, "No, no. The other job is more exciting, isn't it? Because now you're influencing results throughout the organization and not just within your tiny little area." And of course, this is what makes this job interesting. But it comes with different accountabilities, and it's a tricky job. It's a big job being a knowledge leader, like it's a big job being a leading leaders.

Chris: Can you help me square the circle? So we have Denise who decided to, instead of leading others in sales and becoming the sales manager, become a knowledge leader. And let's say Kent actually takes the job — he wants to become a sales manager, so he's responsible for leading others in sales. Both of them are accountable for the people on the sales team's performance. So how does that work? Which part is the sales manager who's leading others responsible for, and which part is Denise responsible for as the knowledge leader?

Kent: So we have a team leader. There are four salespeople, and one of these salespeople is Denise. She's now a knowledge expert — not a knowledge leader, because then she would probably be sitting in the corporate sales function and not out in the sales team.

But let's take the sales team. The team leader is held accountable for the consolidated result of the team.

Chris: So like whatever the profit, revenue target — holistically, did they hit their number?

Kent: Now the team leader says to Denise: besides doing sales yourself, you need to spend 20% of your time supporting three other people. Of course, I lower the sales revenue number for you because you have less time, but then I add this other part, whereas the other three are only held accountable for a certain sales revenue.

My role is just to increase sales in this team, and I've decided as a team leader I can increase sales even better if I take some of the functional support and training and push that down to a person. And I know that Denise will find this attractive because she's looking for a career opportunity. She wants to grow, but I can't grow her by giving her my job — but I can grow her by creating this knowledge expert role. Later on, she might still prefer a team leader role, or she may prefer a specialist career.

But here's the key point: this is a key thing about the specialist pipeline. It allows leaders to dynamically grow specialists in everyday life, even without getting permissions from somebody, without having a budget. They can look into their own team and say, "Hmm, maybe we should organize ourselves this way so we have some knowledge experts." They can do that if they want to and if they believe it adds value.

Now, when Denise is promoted into a sales knowledge leader role, she's probably taken out of this team and put into the corporate sales function. Now she will be developing sales processes, deciding what kind of sales pipeline system should we use, and so on. But here's the thing — we want to do corporate analysis on sales activities, but that requires people to correctly input data out in the front line. So Denise is now accountable not just for deciding on tools, but also for ensuring they're being used. She has to get out there and convince people, sell the concept.

Chris: All the different sales managers — she has to persuade them to use the CRM or follow the new playbook or whatever the thing is.

Kent: So she has to understand how to drive change. She has to understand stakeholder management. On the one hand, she needs deep expertise in sales, but she also needs broad expertise — a T profile — in terms of how do I get things done across the organization? And knowledge leaders will normally end up spending half of their time just getting things done. That's why some knowledge experts say no thank you to a knowledge leader role.

Chris: Because she's not selling anymore, right? She's gone to the corporate sales function, so she's not doing the thing that brought her joy in the first place.

Kent: No. Some find that very attractive, others do not. But that's the same — some would like to be a leading others and then move to leading leaders, but most leading others don't want to become leading leaders. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the nature of the game.

Then, a knowledge principal — the higher level — what makes the difference there? I have not come across a knowledge principal in a sales function, so I need to jump into another function. Let me go back to safety. I know that many of your colleagues would appreciate that.

Chris: Absolutely.

Kent: So I'll give you an example. We work with a drilling company — they rent out drilling rigs. And they said, "We would like to have a knowledge principal in safety." The first question from my side is, "Okay, but is it a strategic position?" And they say, "Yes, it is. And here's the point, Kent — we can win market shares if we do better on safety than our competitors. If we can increase the threshold for how well your safety numbers could be — for instance, lost time accidents — then we could actually influence the industry, and then our buyers of our services would start increasing their demands, and our competitors would be in trouble."

So they set out on a journey: "Over the next three years, we want to improve our lost time accident numbers and a couple of other safety numbers so we are number one in our industry. And when we're done with that, we're gonna start influencing the industry through different organizations so that we bring our competitors in trouble." Now, this is really a solid strategy. And this is an example of safety becoming a competitive edge.

So to be a knowledge principal, you have to represent something that could become a competitive edge for the company. Maybe it never will, because you don't know what your competitors are doing. But you make bets. You make bets as a company: "This is where we want to be better than everybody else." And then you invest, and hopefully some of it will materialize over time. And this is where knowledge principals play a key role. You will find them in many different functions. I haven't seen them in sales, as I said, but I've seen them in most functions.

Chris: Just to jump in — so the bet is: if we don't make any changes, we're at a level four in terms of safety. In order to get to a level seven to create differentiation, that means creating and disseminating new knowledge that we don't have today. So it needs a principal-level person because it's a strategic objective to develop the organization.

Kent: And I did once meet a knowledge leader in the sales function who strived to be a knowledge principal. One of the things he said to me was that the way our sales process was made stronger than everybody else's. And I said, "Can you give me an example?" He said, "Yes. For instance, when we are part of tenders" — this was inside renewable energy — "we bring 20 people together. They work maybe two months on this tender together and put in all the resources. We send in the tender, and then we win or we lose. Guess what, Kent? If we lose, then we get together and really discuss why we lost. But now it gets better — and this is where we do something I know our competitors are not doing: when we win, we also get together and discuss why we won." And his point was, we can learn as much from why we won as from why we lost, because we need to do more of those things in the future and not forget doing the things that caused us to win. He said, "I've been in other companies. I know they're not doing that."

But you see, it's a specialist who very purposefully sits down and says, "I want to do something better than our competitors." It's not just by chance or by seniority. Making it to knowledge principal is about having deep knowledge, but also: am I able to use that knowledge to build a competitive edge? That's the knowledge principal level.

Now, that's what the book outlines. Of course, when we work with clients, they have to customize this — decide, are we three levels, four levels, two levels, and so on. I have to say though, after having worked with it now since the book came out three years ago, it does seem that these three levels work very well. And then you can stretch one level a little up or down inside the company in terms of when you break into each level.

Chris: Do you have to have a knowledge principal in a function? If there's not one in safety or sales, you'd still have knowledge leaders and knowledge experts, but they would report up to somebody in a different... How does that work?

Kent: Specialists don't report to each other, because then they would be building a hierarchy.

Chris: Okay.

Kent: A knowledge leader doesn't have any reports. Remember, Denise — when she moved into the sales knowledge leader role, she was pulled into corporate.

Chris: Sure. But who does Denise report to as a knowledge leader?

Kent: She probably reports into maybe the chief commercial officer, or the head of sales, and she's just responsible for the sales processes and tools. Others are responsible for maybe strategic client management, others for whatever. So she may report straight into the chief commercial officer — that's not that common for a knowledge leader. A knowledge principal could do so. But then the chief commercial officer may have five people below them, and she reports into one of them.

Chris: But the head of sales is a leading leaders person, right? They do have direct reports. But this fictitious company just doesn't need a knowledge principal — a knowledge leader is enough in this example, maybe?

Kent: Because the company has to decide how they want to compete in the market. And each function has to decide: do we want to make a bet in our function on building something unique? And if you have it within a function, it's not just, "Oh, she's a knowledge principal in sales." No, she's probably a knowledge principal in sales processes or sales tools, because sales is a broad thing.

If you take human resources — there's actually a quite interesting example. In human resources, you can have a knowledge principal, but they could have knowledge principals in multiple different things: talent management, leadership development. I work with a bank — they promoted somebody into a knowledge principal role in diversity.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Kent: And their logic was this: they had looked at the market, maybe together with McKinsey or whoever, done a strategy, and part of that strategy was figuring out who their most profitable clients were and what that client picture was gonna look like in the future. What they figured out — this was eight years ago — was that private banking clients were where they made the most money. So they wanted more of those. What they also figured out was that the fastest-growing group of people was actually wealthy single women.

Chris: Mm.

Kent: Wealthy single women. So they said, "Okay, so we should expect to have more and more single women as clients. But are we sure our bank is organized the right way? What does that mean?" They looked at their top 200 managers and said, "Among our top 200 managers, 80, or 82%, are men. If we just take these two distinctions — and there can be more — are we sure we're gonna make the right decisions in the bank if we want to attract a group of people who are not male, who are female?"

And they said, "We don't know, but we think maybe we should have a better balance." Just to pick on these two, there needs to be a better balance, otherwise we're concerned we're gonna make the wrong decisions, and then we can't attract this client base. So they said, "Diversity is important." And when they moved into the diversity agenda, it was not due to political reasons or to look nice. It was a pure business reason: "We need a better balance diversity-wise in our top 200 executives."

Then they promoted somebody to the knowledge principal role and said, "You need to drive this agenda." And she reported directly to the chief HR officer. Not only that, she was present at board meetings every time — she was often called directly to the CEO because this was a strategically critical move they were making. She was not a knowledge principal in human resources — she was a knowledge principal in diversity, who just happened to be working in the human resources function. There can be knowledge principals in all functions, but it has to be an active decision that we need one, we want one. It's not just there.

Applying the Pipelines in Professional Services and AEC

Chris: So in our space, in professional services writ large — but in architecture and engineering specifically — you oftentimes find principals at market sector levels, and then principals within disciplines, so it could be structural engineering or architecture or something like that. But a lot of times it feels like... and we have a seller-doer model here, right? Where the client wants to meet with the most knowledgeable expert, but it's also the person doing business development, and also the person overseeing the projects. How have you seen professional services organizations try and tease apart that kind of leading leaders/leading others from the knowledge principal role in a way that makes sense for them?

Kent: The most common thing I've seen is creating center of excellence areas. So they call it center of excellence, and this is where they place knowledge leaders, knowledge principals, whatever — they place them there. And then they are available to the commercial team.

Chris: Right. But they don't have that day-to-day billable pressure of selling work and getting their time cards in and being 90% utilized, because they're in a center of excellence trying to raise the boat for others. Is that right, or not necessarily?

Kent: Some of them will normally still have, typically, 80% billable that I see in most companies. They need to be on projects.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Kent: But in this case, they have to dedicate time to both maintaining their domain of expertise and being available to the salespeople. And this is where they get stretched, right? Because salespeople want to bring them all the time, but it doesn't add to their billable hour thing. But I think everybody in project organizations gets stretched due to this billable hour thing. There's a good reason for having these numbers and KPIs and billable hours — nothing wrong with that — but it is just the nature of the game. You get stretched.

The one thing that we often see compromised in this case is that they don't find time to maintain their domain of expertise. And that's actually a problem for the company, because they have a knowledge principal today, but will they in two years?

Chris: Is that because they lose the domain because they aren't working on enough projects, or because they aren't doing enough continuous education and learning and research and blue-sky thinking? Where does it happen?

Kent: It's the latter. They're too billable.

Chris: Yeah.

Kent: They'll bill up 80 hours, and the salespeople are just pulling them out, and it's hard to say no, and it's always a very important deal — which it is. So it's hard to say no, and they always have to cancel, "Okay, but then I have to cancel this conference on Friday." So it always gets canceled.

They don't go. And to be a knowledge principal also means you have to invest a lot of time in things that you don't know if they're ever gonna make an impact. You will go to conferences about things that are not directly relevant to you but are adjacent — because real innovation comes when you cross different domains of expertise. You need to get out and meet people who represent different domains.

I have an interesting story in the book about a British hospital. There's a person responsible for premature-born kids. What happens there is you have a small room with about 12 people, and the woman would come in and give birth under critical circumstances — it's not normally planned. It's something that happened, and then you do it. So there are two lives at risk, everything has to happen in 15 minutes, and so on.

To fast-forward, this person tried to go everywhere to get inspiration on how to improve — not because they had many casualties, but just to get better and better. In other hospitals, they couldn't learn — "We do it the same way." Continental Europe, the same way. Finally, he ended up at Formula One in Monaco. Did you see that coming?

Chris: No, I did not.

Kent: But have you seen them when they change tires?

Chris: The pit crew — it makes sense now that you say it.

Kent: 12 people, or 14 — a lot of people. If they do it wrong, somebody's going to get hurt. And the doctors in the surgery room can actually get hurt too.

And think about it — in a Formula 1 team, there are maybe 12 people working down on the ground, but there's another 20 or so sitting up there monitoring with hundreds of cameras what's going on, because they need to improve by 0.001 seconds to get the world record. They evaluate after every race — what can we do differently? They invent things. So they offered this hospital a pro bono visit to come and set up around the team — they put up glass walls, put their people around, and asked the women giving birth, "Are you okay with having 50 people sitting there looking?" And those who were okay with it said fine. And after that, the Formula 1 team could go in and say, "Look, you need to make different color markings on the floor, because you're running around in there. You can only walk there. You should stay within the blue area. You don't have to move into the red area, so why are you doing that?" "I don't know." "Yeah, people walk around. Don't walk around — stay within your color zone." And: "Oh, no, you have to put it like this on the table because you always grab it like this with your hand. If it's turned a little, it takes too long."

So they went in and did that pro bono. But it's an example — who gets allowed and finds time to go to Formula 1, of all the knowledge principals you know? Nobody. But that's where they had a huge breakthrough in how they did things.

So anyway, it was a long story, but I think sometimes things are better illustrated with a storyline. Companies, if you want a competitive edge, you need to invest in either maintaining it or developing it. It seldom comes by chance. You create it on purpose. But then you need to purposefully invest time and money. You need to promote people into this knowledge principal role and give them the responsibility. You need to work on this over the next one, two, three years, and then hopefully you get better than anybody else.

Chris: And you need to protect their hours — because they're pulled not only into billable work, but also into business development, like you said, and then also into innovation. So it's like... help them not be pulled too thin. You're short-changing your future by over-optimizing for the present.

Kent: Yeah. But here's the thing. One of the reasons this keeps happening the wrong way is because you don't have the specialist pipeline. You don't have a structured way of having this conversation. Because if these people — these knowledge principals who are supposed to develop or maintain a competitive edge — are not considered as such, then they are just billable-hour assets.

Whereas if we think about this from a strategic perspective, these professional services companies would all agree it's all about having and building competitive edges. They would agree to that. But if they don't have a strategic, systematic way of doing that, then it normally starts happening by chance. This offers at least one leg on a four-legged chair to be more purposeful in building competitive edges. It doesn't solve it, but it offers one leg.

Chris: Yeah. What you just said is why I was attracted to your work, and the second I heard of this book I bought it instantly. Before we even had the podcast, I knew if we did it, I would want to bring Kent on. We named the podcast Smarter by Design — it's exactly what you're saying. This is a design, this is a business design opportunity, and not relying on chance. I think that's great.

Strategic Implementation and Looking Ahead

Chris: I want to go a few more things before we wrap up. I want to go all the way back to your container stackers and ship painters that you mentioned — the ones where if they don't show up on Monday, the company's in trouble. What does a firm that has gone down the specialist pipeline path do better with that? How is it better, having gone through the specialist pipeline?

Kent: It wasn't done back then, so I don't have a real-life example from that. I'd actually like to share a real-life example from another company, if that's okay.

You have a large manufacturing company. They have a CTO. This company has worked with the specialist pipeline for about eight years or so — it's fairly anchored in the organization. The CTO reports directly to the CEO. The CTO has eight direct reports. Four of them are knowledge principals — meaning individual contributors, knowledge principals — and four of them are leading leaders. He has a total organization of about 380 people, something between 350 and 400. Think about it — in such a big organization, normally all the direct reports are leaders who manage. Not in his part. He said, "No. I need the knowledge principals to report directly to me and be in our management team. They represent the future of this company. I cannot put them down reporting through multiple other layers. They need to be part of the management team."

Chris: Because their knowledge is so critical to our strategy.

Kent: But here's the point. One day, by chance, I ran into him during a lunch break, and he said, "Hey, Kent, do you have five minutes?" I said yes. He said, "You know, I have this one person — one of these four knowledge principals — and I have a challenge. I need these four people, but I have to keep paving the road for him. He's thinking, 'Okay, I'm done with my part.' But I say, 'No, you're not done with your part. It's about you integrating with all the other functions in the company, but you have to do that on your own.' He says there's resistance and it's not easy." I told him, "People at this level — I can have them reporting to me, but they have to be able to work very independently. They need executive presence and they need to know how to get things done. And they need to value that they're not done when they're done — they're done when the company's done." But he doesn't get it. What can I do for this guy? Because I really think I'd like him at this level, but if he doesn't improve, I need to put him under another leader.

And here's the point of this little story: because he purposefully worked with the specialist pipeline, he can distinguish. He can say, "Okay, I have these four people, they're knowledge principals, they can be here, but I need to hold them accountable. I cannot be pulled down to do their work — they need to do their work."

Chris: Yeah, right.

Kent: And that's the point. In the specialist pipeline, if you train people to step up in their role, you can actually elevate them hierarchically. Because today in many companies, specialists are hierarchically pushed down — their real impact is not mirrored by who they report to. They could be elevated up, but many leaders don't do it because they feel, "If I have them reporting to me, I need to spend too much time. I need to have one-on-ones twice a week because they're individual contributors." No, they're knowledge leaders. You need to meet with them every two weeks, but you need to train them to operate independently and hold them accountable for doing so.

But if you don't have these two mechanisms — training them to do so, and making it visible that they're supposed to do so — if you don't have transition programs and specialist portraits, then you can't do this.

And back to the question of what are we actually doing with the leadership pipeline — we only do two things. We've specialized in helping companies design the leadership and specialist portraits, and then the transition programs that help people step up. This is why working with the specialist pipeline is much more than "oh, we finally have some training for the specialist." You do also have that, but it's the strategic impact it can have over time on how you organize yourself, how you run your business, where people are located in the hierarchy. But it takes this focus — otherwise they keep being pushed down in the hierarchy.

Chris: So when you get brought in to do consulting work — you do training, you can customize it for them — but ultimately at some point you have to take their org structure, the way they make decisions, map it to the specialist pipeline, customize it to their language, and help them define what it means to be accountable as a knowledge principal, what are the different values you need to have, how should you spend your time, what are the skills. Is that what implementation looks like for you working with clients?

Kent: It very much is. And the key to success for us — and maybe for all consultants — is we have to work with the company where it is. We cannot come in with all our high-flying ideas and thoughts. Well, we can do that in a value proposition speech, but after that it normally starts with: okay, let's get the basics to work here. Today you're organized the way you are — now we build it around that. But then when they get more comfortable with things, that's when they can start elevating. That's when they can start really harvesting from the investment they've made in building this concept into the organization. But we always start working with companies the way they are. We don't decide whether they need knowledge principals — they decide whether they need knowledge principals. But we introduce them to how to think about it.

And therefore, the specialist pipeline concept will support a company in doing this strategic capability building. One thing: "This is where you are today. We've mapped your organization. Where do you want to be three years from now? Where do you need to be? And if you want to move from here to here, think about how long it takes to develop a knowledge expert into a knowledge leader." And they're gonna say, "Well, at least three years." Yeah, think about that. When do you need to start? Tomorrow. Or yesterday.

Chris: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the next best time is today.

Kent: One of the most strategic decisions you make — those are people decisions, because it takes so long. Going back to my money analogy: money is easy. You call a bank or you have a credit line, you take $10 million, withdraw them, put them into the company, and they work effectively from day one. But people — it takes time before they work effectively. And if you then want to develop them to another job, that's gonna take another one, two, three years. It's such a strategic piece of work.

Okay, now I get excited. This is what keeps me excited about doing what I do, because I know when I'm sitting with these organizations, I'm opening up a door for them to see: we're not appreciating how strategic this is. The reason we keep failing, the reason we keep not getting the results we want, is because we don't have these basic frameworks in place that can help us have strategic conversations about leaders and specialists. This is where I feel I'm making a difference when I'm sitting with these companies.

Chris: If you had your choice — and maybe the answer is it depends — would a company work on leadership pipeline first, then specialist pipeline, or work on them both at the same time? What do you think the optimal way is for a company to think about this?

Kent: I always say to companies it's about finding a sweet spot. A sweet spot in terms of what is the easiest thing to get implemented quickly so you get a win. Some companies will say, "Okay, we have a huge engagement problem — should we just do something about our leading others?" Other companies will say, "We actually have a frontline leader program, but we've never thought about leading leaders as a distinct thing — let's do something there." Other companies would say, "No, now it's finally time. The specialist area is where people are screaming for a solution, even though we need all the other stuff too." So I normally say to companies, "Let's talk about what your sweet spot is."

Chris: Both in terms of the biggest need, but also the thing where you're most likely to move the needle. Is it also possible to start within just one function — like mechanical engineering or healthcare — versus trying to build an architecture for the whole company all at once?

Kent: Yes. Actually, the specialist pipeline — contrary to the leadership pipeline — often starts having a home in a function.

Chris: Okay.

Kent: Yeah. There's a functional head who says, "I need this." They have budgets —

Chris: Someone hands them the book.

Kent: Yeah. And then they start. But what we do when we work with that function is we don't go in and design a purely functional approach. We design an approach that can afterwards be spread out to the rest of the company, so when other functions mature and build interest, you can just scale it into them too. And we always say that to the functional manager: "Look, we don't want to sit here, build a little solution for you, charge you $50,000-$70,000, and then move to the next function and do the same. We create a solution that is good for you but can also be scaled in the rest of the business — that's also in your interest, right?" But it often starts in one function — mechanical engineering, R&D, supply chain — those are maybe the three most common functions it starts in.

But here's why — and now we're back to why specialists are somewhat alienated in companies. Leadership normally starts in corporate and then is spread out. Why? Because all these companies with 3,000 or 4,000 or more employees have a head of leadership development. Now my question to you is: do they also have a head of specialist development?

Chris: No.

Kent: Why not? Because it's not considered equally important. If it were, it would be there.

Now, in all fairness, because I'm being a little harsh — 20 years from now they will, because then the specialist pipeline book and books like it will have made it totally normal. Because 50 years ago, all companies didn't have a head of leadership development — 50 years ago, leadership development was considered a cost. Today, I would say 50% of the companies we work with don't consider it a cost — they consider it a necessity to run a business. The other 50% still consider it a cost. Same thing with the specialist pipeline — 20, 25 years from now, you'll start having that anchor elsewhere.

And just to give an example: today, thousands of people end up on our website because they search for "leadership pipeline." But people don't search for "specialist pipeline" because they don't know it exists. It has to mature. It's an educational process for companies.

Chris: Actually, that leads me to two final questions.

The first one is: the book came out a few years ago, first edition. And I think every author I've ever talked to has a trepidation about it — once the book is written and published, you've learned something a week afterwards and you want to rewrite or change something. What have you learned since you published the book that, if you were to do a second edition, you would add or change? What are the big things?

Kent: So first of all, it's a very good point. I spent six years on the research and then another two years finalizing the book — partly because I'm running a company as CEO on the side, but mostly because I want to write a book that doesn't have a one-year life, but has a 10-year life. And how can it? Take the Leadership Pipeline book. If I were writing a book about a certain leadership concept, it could die tomorrow — maybe that concept just wasn't important anymore. But the Leadership Pipeline book doesn't do that. It writes about the work to be done. And 50 years ago, a leading others selected direct reports, developed direct reports, drove engagement, delegated, set direction — and they're also gonna do that 25 years from now.

Chris: Yeah.

Kent: So since these two books are focused on the work to be done, that's first of all what keeps them alive, but it's also why it's good for a company — you implement this and you don't have to change it every two or three years, because the work to be done doesn't change. The context you do the work in might change, but not the work to be done.

Chris: You can implement radical candor or how to do difficult conversations, but that's a way of doing the work, not the work itself.

Kent: And then it's business goals instead of business objectives. Then it's KPIs instead of goals. Then it's ADKAR. There are different models and things you like, but the work to be done doesn't change.

I had a funny question the other day. I was doing an executive session for about 40 people in a defense company, and one of them asked me after three hours, "So what about the generational thing? I'm 55," he said, "but I have leaders in my part that are 27, and I often get challenged about generational differences. But you have one model. Is it different depending on that?"

I said, "Look, next time when you sit with this leadership portrait for the leading others, anybody 27, 24, or 32 years old can say to you, 'Hey, I belong to a different generation.' And you can say to that person, 'Good for you, but this is still the job to be done.' You can be generation X, Z, or Y, but as a leading others in my department, you're supposed to select good people, develop people, assess performance, set direction, drive engagement, build the team. This is the work to be done."

So it's generationally neutral. And it's culturally neutral because I know for certain, working all over the world, that leadership style has to be different — even in the US across states, and obviously China, Denmark, France, Germany, and so on. The leadership style is different, but the work to be done is the same. The leading others is supposed to do the same work, but you need to do it in different ways, of course, depending on the culture you work in and how experienced your team is. But the work to be done is still the same. And that's why it's a very powerful infrastructure to have in your company.

Chris: That makes a lot of sense. I love that.

Kent: Now back to your question — what would I do differently?

Chris: Thank you for helping me do my job.

Kent: So right now, nothing. But we keep doing research, and let's see five, six, seven years down the road. There's no chance there'll be a new specialist pipeline book from my side three years from now.

Chris: That's great. How — so if people want to learn more, obviously they can go to your website, they can read the two books — "Leadership Pipeline," "Specialist Pipeline." What else? If I'm a CEO of an architecture and engineering firm, or a COO who thinks this could be relevant, or I'm a functional leader in one of those teams, what's the best way to engage with your company and your ideas?

Kent: If they want to engage with us, they just reach out via our website. If they want to do it on their own and say, "Let's give it a shot and then maybe later get some support," then I would say: identify somebody inside the organization or function who can become the knowledge leader in the specialist pipeline — meaning they start diving into it. Because the book itself is very operational, so it actually provides a lot of operational help, and you'll also find resources on our YouTube channel — especially there — that can further help you. We do author talks frequently that you can get invited to and so on.

We have a business, so yes, we like people calling us, wanting to work with us. But from a brand perspective, we also need a lot of companies working with this concept without involving us, because otherwise we can never broaden it out to all those people who deserve to experience the value of it.

Chris: Well said. That's very generous of you to think of it that way. And you're very generous to have spent the time with us and our community and our listeners. I'll thank you on behalf of them. This was wonderful, and I hope very useful and eye-opening for a lot of people.

Kent: I get totally excited when I talk about this. So thank you very much for inviting me.

Chris: That's evident. All right. Thank you, Kent.

Kent: Thank you.