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Succession Planning for Success

  By christinapd • February 6, 2012 - 11:50 am
Succession PlanningSuccession planning for success

Succession planning is a bit of an art, if it’s carried out effectively that is.  Perhaps I’m old fashioned, or perhaps I’m just an advocate of the principle of fair, open and transparent to the point of being a proverbial pain.  But do we score an own goal by disincentivising our employees, by not appearing to be fair, open and transparent when succession planning?

Why do we need succession planning?  Well in its purist form, it is to make sure that the organisation can continue to function with the right people, with the right skills at the right time. Some spin-off benefits of succession planning, can be bringing in new and fresh talent, or existing employees with a clear and possible career path.

One of the biggest confusions I have seen about succession planning, is when people are being earmarked to replace people who may be ready to retire, or they might be coming up for their next career step.   The practice of naming specific people to replace an incumbent is not succession planning.   It is a contingency plan.  There may be all kinds of reasons to have a simple contingency strategy, but usually it is because it is a specialist post which would leave a huge vacuum if the incumbent suddenly left and the talent pool is severely limited.

Even a contingency strategy like this can cause resentment with employees if it is not distinctly used away from any succession planning exercised.  To use a contingency strategy properly, employees would have no doubt that the person being earmarked for replacement was the right person, with the right skills, and the process fits with the organisational ethos.

The difference between contingency plans and succession planning is that succession planning is about helping people develop and be in the right place at the right time for existing roles, or developing roles.  Good succession planning should be about bringing in a range of talent, either in or outside of the organisation, and it should be fair and open.

Before you begin succession planning, you need to have an ethos.  Now that ethos will differ depending upon the business you are in.  For example, if you are succession planning in a family run business, it’s usually the first born son…..oh alright, or daughter.  If you are in a corporation or a public sector organisation, you might want to have a policy of growing your talent within and there are a number of ways you can do that.   If you are a business on the move, you might want to look at bringing in new talent with new and evolving skills.  Or you might have a combination of these approaches.

To successfully succession plan, my top tips are:

  1. Be clear about why you want to introduce succession planning.
    • Is it to recruit new and evolving talent?
    • Is it to develop new leaders/managers/specialists for the future?
  2. Be open about why you want to introduce succession planning with your current workforce.
  3. Be clear with your current employees about your rationale and let them see the possibilities for them.  If there aren’t possibilities for them, then be clear about that, but let them know why.
  4. Be clear about the difference between contingency planning and succession planning.
  5. If you have a list in a drawer with names, and the people who are named don’t know they are on there, then you might want to think about how helpful or not this is.
  6. If you have a list of names, and it is to replace specialist jobs and no-one but the named persons know they are on the list, then again you might want to think about your strategy.
  7. Be clear about the criteria you are going to apply to any succession planning exercise and communicate it widely.
  8. Be structured.  Make sure that you and everyone knows how it is going to work and what they can expect.  Align other employee lifecycle events with the succession plan where needed.
  9. Be open to attracting talent from everywhere.  There may be someone in your current workforce, who might not be displaying the characteristics for future job filling now, but with an open invitation, they might just go for it.
  10. If you decide the future is through a graduate scheme, try to make it accessible for existing workers, or have a route through for existing workers.  There is nothing more annoying than being great and going the extra mile, doing the duties of higher level jobs and being told that you can’t compete because you have to have a degree.
  11. If you want to source talent from within, then tie your succession planning to your appraisal/feedback scheme.  It is the easiest way to have those conversations and help people work in a way that helps them aim for different roles.
  12. If employees think they can progress in their own company, then they can be more likely to stay.  Chart out career pathways for your staff so that they can plan for the future.
  13. If your succession plan includes attracting talent from outside the organisation, make sure you have tapped the potential within first.

I have seen succession plans which have caused distrust and suspicion, the most toxic of employee attitudes.  So don’t ruin great relationships with your employees; make your succession planning, business focused, fair and transparent.

What do you think? Do you have any recommendations to add?  Do you have any views?  I would love to hear from you.

 

This great article is from the People Discovery blog, associated with The e.MILE People Development Magazine: the Magazine is currently running a series for the 6 months April to September 2014 based on the challenges identified by The Centre For Creative Leaderships report 2013 Don't Miss Out!  Sign up here to be notified of our subsequent issues and posts

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If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.

   
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Strategy – Set Your SAT NAV

  By christinapd • January 20, 2012 - 4:55 pm
StrategySet  Your Strategy: Set  Your SAT NAV

I am afraid I am a strategy geek.  What’s wrong with that? You might ask.  Well nothing except when you start developing a healthy eating strategy instead of a diet, or a university funding strategy instead of saving for your child’s uni course, it’s a bit sad.

Well no, even I’m not that bad, although it’s been proven that many of us take our work pattern home with us, but that’s a whole different blog post!

I wish there were other words in the dictionary to describe strategy.  The Oxford dictionary definition of a strategy is “A plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim:” Thesaurus results have unhelpful words like “plan, approach, tactic and even scheme” as alternatives. As you can see it’s very difficult to inspire you with such mundane language.

Setting a strategy that works inspires me.  I know I am in a minority about this, but please bear with me.  Setting a strategy involves so many elements and requires a sharp skillset.  If it is going to be successful that is.  If you have an organisational or team strategy and it’s lying in a drawer waiting for someone to blow the dust off it, then it probably isn’t going to work.   In reality there are many components involved in setting a strategy, too many to mention, so I will concentrate on the vital components.

So what are the vital components of a successful strategy

  • You have to have vision.  If you want to achieve something, then you need to be able to describe, what it looks like, where it is, who is involved, when you want it to happen.  You need to be able to see it, hear it, feel it, smell it and taste it.  You need to be able to describe your vision so it becomes real in your imagination.  Once you have visualised what you want and articulated, this then becomes your goal.   It’s pinpointing exactly where you want to go and every strategy needs at least one.
  • The next part is to plan out how you are going to get to your goal.  Now I know from experience that we are all different.  Some of us love detailed plans with lots of milestones and deadlines.  Others like some key milestones along the way, and don’t want to bother too much with the detail.    Some of us don’t need a plan at all, but that might be a leap of faith too far unless you and your team are wholly committed.  The truth is, the structure of the plan doesn’t matter too much.  If you think about most projects or outcomes you have delivered, there are many ways to skin a cat, or many different routes you could have gone down to get there.   The real trick about having a plan is twofold. Firstly it keeps you focused on achieving the outcomes and secondly, it keeps you moving forward.   That’s why a plan is essential; however you want to detail it.
  • You need someone to make sure you achieve the milestones and to review what is happening so that you can keep on track.  The owner of the strategy needs to be an opportunist and be innovative.  These skills are absolutely necessary when the original plan of how to get there becomes unstuck. The owner will always navigate you back to the right road, so that you will get to the right destination or achieve the right goal.
  • You need to check on progress, and this is preferably someone different from the owner.  Someone who can provide a fresh pair of eyes, or a different perspective, but someone who also wants to reach the goal as passionately as the owner.   In other words your back seat driver.
  • And finally, you need to be able to feel the discomfort of uncharted terrain.  If the plan doesn’t unfold the way you thought and the route you planned out doesn’t look like you imagined it would, don’t panic and stop.  Don’t go back to the beginning either.  You need to trust that sometimes unfamiliar territory is exactly what you need in order to get where you need to go.

So my proposal as a new term for strategy is as you will have guessed by now “SAT NAV.”

You pop in your postcode (goal)

You have a general idea about the direction, timing and route, so you can take money for petrol, or time for a loo break etc. etc. (a plan)

You start driving.  When you take a wrong turn, the SAT NAV prompts you and takes you back to your original route.  (owner)

Your back seat driver will observe as you are driving

A great strategy is like correctly setting your SAT NAV.  You need to be able to trust it will get you where you want to be, you must enjoy the journey, but be vigilant about taking wrong turns.  You need to be flexible about taking another route if you do take a wrong turn.  Sometimes your plans will have to be changed if you want to reach your goals on time.  After all if you’ve ever put in the wrong post code, then you will know how long sometimes it takes to dawn on you that you are going the wrong way.

 

This great article is from the People Discovery blog, associated with The e.MILE People Development Magazine: the Magazine is currently running a series for the 6 months April to September 2014 based on the challenges identified by The Centre For Creative Leaderships report 2013 Don't Miss Out!  Sign up here to be notified of our subsequent issues and posts

121242255

If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.