How much impact does leadership inexperience have on your organization? I feel the sleeping giant today in terms of operational excellence is the number of new people. By this, I mean those who are new to the organization as well as those who are new to the role in general. For example, a person might be experienced in leadership but new to the organization. Or, they might be part of the organization, but new to leadership.

In both cases, the lack of experience impacts operations—often in a good way but sometimes in a not-so-good way. Layer in the inexperience on the front line, and the challenges are multiplied.

How long does it take for a new person to acclimate to the team? Usually, it takes several weeks or months, or—to be totally up to speed—as much as a year or more. While this acclimation period can be challenging for a frontline worker, it can take even longer for someone in leadership.

Here’s why: Frontline workers work side by side every day with people who are doing a similar job. A leader often works alone and does not view other leaders in action. Test this out. Ask leaders how many of them have sat through another leader’s department meeting to learn. The answer is usually zero.

It is critical for organizations to build repeatable skills on a regular basis. Otherwise, each new leader starts over, learning in isolation. Best practices stay trapped in silos, mistakes are repeated, and learning is slower than it needs to be. Multiply that across departments, shifts, and roles, and the result is an organizational performance shortfall.

If there is a 20 percent turnover rate, the entire organization turns over in a five-year period.

This is why skill-building should be ongoing. Each leader’s leader is mentoring their direct reports. However, how consistent is leadership in the organization? Consistency is critical to have great performance.

A few tips:

• Create a list of foundational skills every manager needs to display for success.
• By leader, assess how they perform in each of the skills.
• Create ways for the leaders to acquire each skill, including observing other leaders.
• Measure the experience level in each area of the organization. This is what I recommend when a top leader reaches out with concern about performance. You will often find it is not the process that is not working; it is the inexperience that is impacting performance. Be patient and invest in skill-building. This usually leads to a focus on empathy as well.

It takes time to gain experience and time for an investment in development to pay off. Organizations that commit to consistent skill-building don’t just develop better leaders…they create stability, confidence, and performance that lasts.