The more successful we are at recruiting, the more that has the inadvertent effect of diminishing our emphasis on the long-term development of others. Why invest in long-term leadership development when you can just use ready-made leaders from somewhere else? Ironically, short-term success short-circuits long-term success.

The other problem we run into with recruiting leaders is seeing a drop in quality in our pool of qualified candidates. We’re tapping them all out without bringing in new life and we’re giving them less time and attention, spreading them too thin. It’s like overfishing a pond. Instead we need to stock our pond with new life and multiply it.