By Joseph Daniel McCool

There are plenty of good reasons to look outside for the kind of lab management talent that can propel your organization to peak performance.

But there are likewise just as many good reasons you should take a second look at internal candidates the next time you need to fill a critical role.

At some point in time, searching outside the walls of their existing workforce became something of a reflex reaction for many companies as they responded to news that a talented manager had departed for greener pastures, retired or was about to retire, or otherwise was no longer in the game.

That may have come about because so many organizations stopped investing - somewhere along the road - in developing the next generation of management leaders.

Looking externally for fresh talent has always been a way to disrupt an under-performing culture, add new experience, skills and perspective to new challenges, and otherwise to bulk up to turn organizational weakness into a real competitive advantage. Recruiting the right person - or people, for that matter - is certainly one way to achieve these critical goals.

But to do so at the expense of the organization’s current roster of talented insiders is indeed a big mistake, and a lost opportunity. Just because they often lack the kind of lobbying that outside recruiters provide so often for compelling external candidates doesn’t mean that a talented, current employee is any less experienced, skilled, or otherwise well-qualified for a step up in management responsibility.

In fact, the development of internal leaders is key to preserving a winning organizational culture, and frankly, is becoming a real yardstick by which to separate the best-performing companies and true employers of choice from all the rest.

Good people want to work for a company - and in a lab environment - in which they can learn, grow, and thrive at their own full potential, and whenever a company fails to invest in its next crop of leaders, it is really setting itself up for a downward spiral in organizational performance and financial returns to shareholders.

What It Means For Your Career: If your performance isn’t getting noticed and/or if you’re not being considered for higher management opportunities with better pay, you should do one of two things. First, you should ask why you’re not being considered a candidate and what you can do to elevate your performance (and your chance of being considered in the future. Or, if you’re really stuck in career neutral because outsiders are getting too much consideration in your view, perhaps it’s time to start looking elsewhere. That may be your only road to a better job with more management responsibility.