Key Ingredients of a Successful Plan
Succession planning is an important part of a business that is able to grow and thrive in a competitive world. Why?
There are two main reasons that succession planning is important.
- We need a work-ready pool of people.
- Our organization must understand that a succession plan impacts long-term sustainability.
If we expect to have the right people in the right jobs at the right time and for the right reasons, we need to have the following key ingredients.
We must be a part of a learning organization.
Succession planning is about developing leaders. In order to do that, we have to belong to an organization where education is valued and where it is supported from the top, all the way down through each layer.
Succession planning does not exist in a vacuum.
As we mentioned earlier, succession planning is a process. The process has to incorporate the other areas of the organization in order to support the business. If the plan does not support the organization, it will be discarded.
Develop reliable data gathering.
Succession planning has been regarded as many things, including being an HR add-on. Succession planning must be demonstrated scientifically, which is impossible if we see it as a strictly creative process (although there is creativity required). Data gathering means that the organization is looking at benchmarks and actual results to measure and assess progress.
Have senior level support.
The CEO or President must endorse and support the succession planning process. The CEO must be involved and be an active participant. This is not just because she/he is one of those critical employees; when the CEO is highly engaged, the program becomes coherent and embraced.
Continually assess your results.
If you do not assess the quality of performance within the organization, you will not learn the level of success – or failure – that the plan holds. We know that succession planning is a long-term endeavor, and so we must ensure that the right people are in the right jobs without losing our focus on performance. If we place people in positions on a hunch that they had the potential, but those people did not actually have the skill to succeed, the leadership pipeline fails.
You do not have to do it all at once.
One major threat to succession planning is that implementation over a short period of time can overwhelm systems and people. Succession planning is a process; change can seem threatening. When you begin to contemplate a succession plan, you could realistically be creating implementation plans across multiple departments, regions, or countries, and it could involve a huge number of people. Step-by-step implementation will allow you to experience success in one area and demonstrate to other areas how effective the process is, while allowing the important work to take place. Phased implementation also allows time to make adjustments to the program before it is widely distributed.