Why Bangladesh needs more leaders than performers

Illustration: TBS

Bangladesh has never lacked people who can get things done. From entrepreneurs building businesses with limited resources to professionals managing complex operations, the country has produced many high performers. 

Yet as organisations grow and the economy becomes more competitive, individual performance alone cannot take us much further. What Bangladesh increasingly needs is the ability to develop leaders who can multiply others' capabilities.

So, if organisations have limited time and resources to invest in people, what should they really be creating: better performers or better leaders?

The distinction is important. A performer creates value largely through their own expertise, effort, and execution. A leader creates value by enabling others to perform, make decisions, solve problems, and, ultimately, lead themselves. An organisation needs both, but the second has a much greater multiplier effect.

This matters because Bangladesh's challenge is increasingly one of organisational capability. A World Bank assessment of Bangladesh's manufacturing sector found that many firms still rely on basic management practices. In contrast, adoption of advanced practices such as Total Quality Management, Lean Production, Kaizen and Six Sigma remains very low. The World Bank has also argued that improving firm capabilities is central to raising productivity and moving Bangladesh towards higher-value manufacturing.

The problem is not simply a shortage of technically capable people. It is whether organisations are developing the managers and leaders who can turn individual capability into institutional capability.

The World Bank's 2022 Enterprise Survey offers another revealing indication. Among surveyed firms that responded to its question on promotion, 24.5% said promotions for non-managers were based solely on performance and ability. In comparison, 21.5% said non-managers were normally not promoted. These figures should not be taken as a complete description of Bangladesh's private sector. Still, they raise a question about how effectively organisations identify, develop and advance their future leaders.

Many organisations follow a familiar pattern. Someone becomes exceptionally good at a job, earns recognition, and is promoted to manage others. The assumption is that because the person performed well, they will naturally know how to lead. But leadership requires a different set of capabilities: developing people, delegating authority, managing disagreement, making decisions under uncertainty, and creating an environment in which others can perform.

Bangladesh's corporate history offers a powerful illustration of what happens when individual leadership is not converted into institutional leadership. Several businesses that flourished under their founders have struggled to maintain their scale or influence after those founders passed away. PwC's Bangladesh Family Business Survey found that 91% of surveyed family businesses planned to transfer control to the next generation, yet none had a robust, formalised and communicated succession plan. 

This is not simply a family-business problem. It points to a wider organisational challenge: building institutions whose capabilities do not depend too heavily on any one individual. A founder's greatest legacy is therefore not merely the business they create, but the leaders and systems they build to carry it forward.

If we want organisations that can scale, survive leadership transitions and compete in a more demanding economy, the objective cannot simply be to produce more exceptional individuals. We must create people who can make exceptional performance reproducible through others.

A strong individual contributor can solve a difficult problem. A strong leader builds a team that can solve difficult problems repeatedly, even when the leader is not present.

Therefore, leadership development should not be treated as a set of workshops or an HR programme reserved for a small group of senior executives. It should be embedded in how organisations operate. People need opportunities to make decisions, manage projects, coach colleagues, take responsibility for outcomes, and learn from failure. Managers should be assessed not only on what their teams deliver but also on the capability they build within those teams.

There are international examples worth considering. Toyota established the Toyota Institute to develop executives and middle managers and to build a continuous pipeline of people capable of leading the organisation as it expanded globally. The underlying idea is simple: an organisation that expects to grow must deliberately develop its leadership capacity alongside it.

Research also supports making leadership development a business priority, not a symbolic investment. McKinsey found that organisations with successful leadership-development programmes were eight times more likely to focus on leadership behaviours critical to business performance. Its research also suggests that leadership development is more effective when it is connected to the organisation's strategy and embedded across the organisation, rather than confined to selected individuals.

For Bangladesh, this has implications beyond corporate HR. As businesses seek to diversify exports, adopt new technologies and compete in more sophisticated markets, managerial and leadership capabilities will increasingly determine how effectively those investments translate into productivity. The World Bank has already identified managerial and technical capabilities as crucial to Bangladesh's manufacturing transformation.

The answer, therefore, is not to stop creating performers. Performance remains the foundation of credibility. But organisations should stop assuming that their best performers will automatically become their best leaders. The transition requires deliberate development and, perhaps more importantly, a different definition of success.

A performer may be proud to be the person everyone depends on. A leader should be proud when the team no longer needs to depend on them for every important decision. That may be the leadership test that Bangladesh needs to take more seriously. When a talented manager leaves, does the organisation lose capability with them, or does the capability they built remain behind?

If we want organisations that can scale, survive leadership transitions and compete in a more demanding economy, the objective cannot simply be to produce more exceptional individuals. We must create people who can make exceptional performance reproducible through others.

Bangladesh does not need fewer performers. It needs more performers who become leaders, and leaders who create more leaders.