Term Definition Introduced in:

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1 Succession Planning Key Terms Term Definition Introduced in: Advisory committee An advisory committee is a system wherein a group of employees is assembled to provide knowledge and experience to employees who need to be versed in specific projects and processes or an organization's culture. Module 5 Educational resources Educational resources are books, software, media, and online programs that provide training on a variety of topics. Module 5 Emotional intelligence Emotional intelligence describes how well someone works with people, builds relationships and teams, coaches and motivates, and empowers employees, and provides constructive feedback. Module 2 EQ EQ stands for Emotional Quotient, and it measures a person's emotional intelligence. Module 2 IDP This acronym stands for Independent Development Plan. An IDP is a set of goals and projects designed specifically to help an individual grow professionally and advance in the organization for which he/she works. Module 2 Mentoring program Stakeholders A mentoring program is a system wherein employees lacking knowledge or experience are matched with other employees who possess the needed experience or knowledge. Stakeholders are those people in an organization who have a vested interest in a particular process or project. Module 5 Module 1 Succession planning Also known as workforce planning, talent management, or career planning, succession planning is the process that organizations use to prepare and identify talented candidates for high level management and leadership positions. Module 1 The Process for Optimal Progress This is a 12-step approach for effective succession planning. Module 2 Glossary Page 1

2 SUCCESSION PLANNING MODULE ONE THE SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF SUCCESSION PLANNING Female: Module One The Scope of Purpose of Succession Planning. Succession planning is sometimes known by different names such as work force planning, talent management, or career planning. For this webinar, we will call it succession planning. Throughout this webinar, I will cover the following major points: what is succession planning? Who does it? Why does our organization need to do it? What if we are a family run business, a non-profit, or a government agency? How do we do it? How long will it take? How much will it cost? What if we don t do it? Succession planning is the process that organizations to prepare and identifying talented candidates for high level management and leadership positions that become vacant for a variety of reasons. For example, a person could retire. The worst case scenario would be that the person dies. A person could resign or move on to a new business opportunity. The company could decide to make changes to the position itself because of changes in the business strategy where the direction of the business or department because of economic conditions, or the company might face the need for disaster recovery or even global challenges, many of which are nearly impossible to predict. As you watch this webinar, I recommend that you have your handout in front of you so you can make notes and start to answer some of the questions I ll be asking. Turn to the page for module one now. Let me give you an example of what succession planning might look like. I m sure many of you are familiar with the national past time of baseball, particularly major league baseball. Major league baseball can provide us with a simple example of how the succession planning concept might work. Major league baseball has been using Page 1

3 succession planning from day one. Ball players enter the minor leagues and are taught or retaught the fundamentals of the ball game at a much higher level of play then they have probably ever experienced. As they get better in their different positions, they re promoted through the varying ranks of the system until they are called to the show, the big leagues. Two great movies that illustrate this are Bull Durham starring Kevin Costner and Moneyball starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. One is from the player s point of view, and the other is from the team s. As the ball player moves up in the organization, he s filling a position for someone who has also moved up or perhaps been shown the way out. The world of baseball is always looking for new talent and has scouts out in all levels of society, and high schools and colleges are observing and taking notes on young players who they would like to recruit. This process has been practiced for decades. It keeps the organization healthy and maintains a constant rotation of new talent. So, that s what we are talking about: how succession planning is a process. It is never finished. It is on-going. It assures that talented employees are always being recruited, trained, developed, retained, appreciated, and prepared for advancement into the ever challenging world that we live and work in. Who does succession planning, and who is responsible for this process? First and foremost, it must come from a key decision maker: the CEO, the president, the board of directors, key stake holders, or possibly someone in human resources who is brought to the attention of senior individuals the importance of succession planning. It could also be an outside consultant who specializes in succession planning and has brought to the company s attention that this process must be done. The purpose is to make sure that the organization has talented employees in place for the company to grow. The Page 2

4 individuals who direct this process must be there to advocate for the purpose of succession planning. They need to advocate, even cheerlead, to make sure all the steps are implanted that will make this an effective and successful process. Why would we want to do this? It does take time. A major news wire service published an article stating that the major leadership is negatively affecting American businesses to meet their prime objectives. A 2008 survey found that 56 percent of employers nationwide are now experiencing that shortage. 31 percent are expecting to have a shortage of leaders that will impede their performance in the one to four years. Why is this shortage occurring? One reason is that nearly 80 million baby boomers are starting to move into their retirement years in record numbers. When the future? Today is when you need to start planning because tomorrow the future. Yes, tomorrow can be five years, ten years, even 20 to 30 years from now, but now is the time to put these processes into place. Now is when we have to plan for the leadership gaps and remedy the hiring mistakes, deficiencies, and vacancies that are putting Americans businesses at risk. You may ask yourself, Do I have to deal with this change? You bet you do, because change is inevitable. This change will be extremely costly for your company if you are not proactive in planning for the changes that are coming. Yes, all change costs money. With change comes opportunity. Remember, opportunity lost is opportunity that could be a deficit for an organization. On the module one page of your handout, jot down what leadership gaps you see that exist today or that you see coming in the near future. What vacancies do you foresee? What deficiencies? Don t forget the hiring mistakes. When we don t hire smart, when we don t hire right, we have to live with those costly mistakes. Please, take a moment now to determine what this is costing Page 3

5 your business. What are these gaps costing you now? Isn t planning to fix or prevent them starting to sound like a good idea? Be aware that we must have, as part of this process, a positive, proactive approach to the realities of the world of this work. One of the key skills, key habits you need to have for succession planning is to be proactive or preventative. We have staff issues and business issues. Staff issues include attrition, turn over, migration, growth based demand, and the needs for new skills and competencies. You can see how these realities impact the business thorough turnover, with growth, with changes, and the new skills and competencies businesses need for the global economy. You can also see things happening within the business that impact its success: changes in strategic direction, economic or competitive challenges, transitions with a family business, ownership or executive leadership changes, and mergers and acquisitions. Some of the questions to ask include: what do businesses need to do to change strategic direction? How do businesses face these challenges? What are some of the executive leader changes that might be needed to meet these challenges? How do we deal with onslaught of mergers and acquisitions? How do we transition a family business? How will this impact the business? Truly, the answers to all these questions come forth when we realize that succession planning is necessary for businesses to handle upcoming, competitive, and internal challenges. It provides you with a positive approach you need to deal with these realities that will occur in the business world. Change is inevitable at both the staff and business levels. Remember, succession planning is insuring that the leadership continuity exists that can handle the attrition and turnover and changes that will occur. It insures the business s sustainability and viability, allows it to grow. It is there to let you have a higher level of Page 4

6 productivity with limited or no down time when you lose a key person or disaster strikes. Another thing about succession planning is that it can provide career paths from within the organization which in turn raises employee morale, lowers recruitment cost, lowers attrition, lowers turnover, and helps prevent losing untapped talent before you have a change to discover it and develop it. When you lose someone to retirement or for any of the other reasons we discussed above, especially someone in a highly technical role or a high level skilled position, these positions are much harder to recruit for and more difficult to fill. If the replacement is a newly hired person without the history that comes with a veteran employee and mistakes are made, you can start to see how important it is to have a succession plan in place to prevent the gaps that would occur without it. At the bottom of the module one page in your handout are two questions I encourage you to take the time to answer in as much detail as you can. First, what if we don t do succession planning? What are the long terms consequences for your organization and the reality of what is coming if you don t take the time do this? You will have attrition. You will have turnover. Let s look at it from the positive side: what if we do start this process? We are all about today, in this session, we are going to think your organization today. Now, answer the second question. What would you do if a top executive left, particularly one in a revenue generating position? What if major disaster struck, like what happened on September 11 th? On that terrible day, many companies lost their entire businesses, their staff, their equipment, their data, their files. The organization that survived that day even without that horrible on their business did so because they had a plan in place. Those companies were able to recoup their losses by following their plan. Page 5

7 SUCCESSION PLANNING MODULE TWO THE PROCESS FOR OPTIMAL PROGRESS: A 12-STEP APPROACH TO EFFECTIVE SUCCESSION PLANNING Female: Module Two The Process for Optimal Progress: A 12-Step Approach to Effective Succession Planning. The page for module number 2 in your handout lists 12 steps for the process of optimal progress in creating your succession plan. We will discuss these steps briefly in this module. Then, we ll focus on more on the most important steps in the remaining three modules of this webinar that cover the six keys. We spoke about the future in module number one. The whole idea of succession planning is to plan for the future so that s where your focus needs to be, and that s step one: make the future the focus. Step 2 is to identify functional and operational requirements. Again, that s the key to succession planning: understanding what type of people will be needed in the future to keep the company running smoothly. Step 3 is gain leadership buy-in. You will quickly see that everyone does not come fully committed to this process automatically. The process takes time, and time is something that some people will not want to give. How long will it take to write, promote, implant, and evaluate the effectiveness of your plan? That depends on the size and type of your organization. For example, for a medium-sized organization with fewer than 800 employees, you need to plan for about six to eight months to complete this process. Please, understand that this is a ball park figure as some organizations have leaner structures than others do. No matter the size of your organization, however, don t put it off. Start now. The most important part of this process is simply to start it. Start with a beta group. Get some success under your belt and then build from that success. When you start Page 1

8 succession planning, sometimes it goes in another direction from what you want, so the addition question on the bottom of the module two page of your handout is, what happens if the process goes south? Here are some suggestions of things to be aware of and thoughts you might want to jot down to be proactive and prevent that from happening. Don t keep succession planning a secret. You need open support from the key leaders on down to others throughout the entire organization. It s easy to overlook the talent that you have inside. Why do we do that? Why do we overlook George over there or Susie down the hall just because they ve been here a long time? Maybe, it has to do with that old management saying that an expert is someone who lives fifty miles away and carries a briefcase. We always seem to more stock in the outside consultant or the new recruit. Remember that you have experts in-house that have something no one new will have: knowledge of your company and its history and the inside scoop. As an aside, sometimes an outside consultant can make things happen that an internal leader can t. It might be worth bringing in someone to work alongside your in-house succession planning team leader to move things along and impress the importance of the plan on the rest of the management team. In addition to that inside knowledge, some of your current individuals have untapped talent. Your succession plan helps you realize this. It maps out the future for the organization by displaying the complete corporate hierarchy which is step four of the 12-step process. You need to know what particular skills your employees have and the competencies that are required in the positions they hold. It s so easy to overlook the individuals who have been with us, thinking that we have to hire from the outside. Don t do that. While you were listing the key positions, you ll also want to do step five: list the expected and likely vacancies and Page 2

9 talent caps. As you inventory your existing people, you ll have hints about whether someone may be planning to retire or leave or if someone doesn t quite have the skillset she needs to either maintain her current or be promoted to the next level. You may also have knowledge of new programs, software tools, equipment, or other game changers the business intends to put in place that may require different skillsets to manage. If it will take a year for the new building to be ready or the new manufacturing process to start up, you have a year to recruit or develop someone to manage that change when it occurs. To do step six, you need to use a tracking tool which is step seven. Whether it s a simple spreadsheet or a 360 degree assessment or a database you create to track the skillsets of your people, this is important so that individuals you have hired do not get overlooked or left out of the process. Relying only on outside recruiting to bring in fresh blood won t always fill the gap when you have a vacancy. To gather all this information, you will need assertive, proactive communication skills. Don t assume that everyone wants to get on board don t expect employees to assert themselves to help you. You ll need to have a conversation about succession planning and regular communication to avoid a disaster or even just a bottle neck down the road if people decide stop talking to you. While we are talking about communication, remember that narrow-minded thinking is deadly. As you complete step eight, development and resource planning, be open to seeing the individuals you already have in the company in other positions. You cannot think that someone is too old or too young or too something else to fill a position. Don t just focus on the hard skills. We know that with the most effective leaders today, it is not their IQ. It is there emotional intelligence or what we call EQ. The emotional intelligence skillset lets us know if someone knows Page 3

10 how to work with people, specifically if they know how to build relationships, how to build teams, how to coach, how to motivate employees, how to give constructive feedback, and how to empower employees. These skills are not necessarily natural. The emotional intelligence increases with development and skill training. As the generation X and Y people move into the work force, this becomes more and more important. Unlike IQ, which is generally fixed at a fairly early age, EQ can be learned and elevated and having time and experience under your belt helps. The last few steps in the 12-step approach can be sabotaged if you don t have a solid training budget. Step 9 is to create individual development plans or IDPs for each employee. To carry out those IDPs will require training. Succession planning means training. It means developing. It means preparing people to use skill sets that they currently do not have. If you begin this process with an insufficient training budge, one that doesn t meet the needs of your organization, you will find very quickly that you will not be able to move forward with the goals and objectives of your plan. Step 10 is to train, mentor, coach, and motivate. You need to offer appropriate training just in time which is why the training budget is so critical. It has to be tied to the succession plan which is part of the strategic plan which is tied to the overall business plan. All these plans have to mesh and work together. One cannot oppose another. Step 11 is about measuring results and monitoring overall progress. To do this, you need to hold the managers accountable. You cannot let managers get in the way of the success of this effort just because they are in secure positions. They may have biases. They may be thinking, No one did this for me twenty years ago, so why should I be willing to do this now to help someone else? Of course, the answer to that is that today we live in a different Page 4

11 world. We live in a different age than we did 20 years ago. What worked in the past won t work now for today s new talent. You cannot develop a one-size-fits-all program because organizations are different, and organizations change with time. What you need to do is have a plan based on your specific organizational needs and your specific individual skill and training gaps. Your succession plan also needs to be part of your organization s mission, vision, strategy, and goals which is step 12. This plan needs to be aligned with all the company s other plans and aligned with programs to retain management and create incentives to make people want to stay at the company. To summarize, the succession plan is a crucial new element that will be your company s plan to accomplish the replacement strategy with your people as key positions open due to attrition or retirement. You ll have job descriptions clearly written and available for people to see, so everyone has access to them for the current and future needs of both your staff and your company. [End of recording.] Page 5

12 SUCCESSION PLANNING MODULE THREE CRITICAL KEYS ONE AND TWO Female: Module Three Critical Keys One and Two. In this module, we will talk about the first two critical keys to your succession plan. Key number one is solid support and buy-in from executive management. Key number two is an accurate, honest, clearly articulated assessment of the talent gaps and requirements. Notice that in your handout, there is space to record the approaches that work for each key, notes on real world situations and solutions, and a box labeled ideas into action where you can jot down your ideas on how to move forward with this key. Key number one, you must have solid support and buy-in from executive leadership and upper management, and if you re working with a board, you need their buy-in as well. This is your fall back when other issues arise. This is critical because it is executive leadership who are the ones who will send the message about the purpose behind why you are implementing this succession plan. Here are the approaches that we know will work: make sure that you demonstrate that succession planning is aligning with and supporting your strategic business plan. Now, if you don t have a business plan in place, you need to start there and put it in place before you start succession planning. You need identify opportunities in each functional area and describe the benefits of succession planning to the senior leaders who oversee these areas making sure they do not feel threatened by pinpointing possible replacements for them when they do move toward retirement. Be sure to tie the succession planning process to the annual appraisal. This is crucial because it sets an expectation that it will be done and it will be done right. Get buy-in in a group setting. Share the purpose behind succession planning and explain what the Page 1

13 benefits are for doing it. Let everyone hear the same information at the same time. We re going for a win-win here. If people are skeptical, let them voice their concerns and put them out on the table and discuss those concerns. Do not move forward until these concerns have been completely discussed and resolved and a commitment has been received from everyone concerned. Another approach that works is to make sure you have a reward and recognition system in place that gives the attaboy or attagirl for their buy-in for the succession planning process. If some leaders are resistant or fearful, find out why. This must be addressed. If this continues, discuss it with their managers. What are the consequences if they do not get on board? Are they afraid they might be replaced prematurely? Remember, the succession planning process must be ethical. Nothing is to be kept secretive because this is for the health and long term viability of the organization. Let s look at some real world situations. What can realistically happen? Some of you might be interested in how this can be done in a family run business. In a family run business, it is very smart to plan early and plan specifically. You need to involve all the family members who are in key management positions. It is also vital to use a non-family advisory board that can be objective and impartial in the decision-making process. You also want to involve non-family members in the process. If there is no hope of advancement for non-family members, why would they stay apart of the business? Another important thing to do is to have younger generation family members build their skillsets outside the family business. There s a great story of a national poultry company who had a family run business. One of the key individuals who was tagged to run the family business in a key leadership role decided to move across the country to Washington state and enter a field that was Page 2

14 entirely contrary to the poultry business. He was gone a long time, five or six years. During that time, a non-family member successfully ran the company. When the family member returned, he did not come in at the top of the business. He entered at the very bottom and worked his way back up to the top doing the dirty work like plucking feathers and processing the chickens as they went through the plant. This was a critical process, so the individual understood how the business worked from the very beginning and what the organization was all about. Another important thing for a family business is to write and have posted a family relations charter. This document outlines how the family will behave to remain professional and productive. Again, that outside advisory board can help here by working objectively to support the family. Another real world situation that occurs during succession planning is when a key leader says he s bought into the process but what he really wants is to sabotage the efforts. This case will require a one-to-one intervention with a backup of the key decision maker who is the champion of the succession planning process. You must confront this type of behavior quickly, because it is now become a performance based issue. To keep the company viable, all the leaders must comply and are required to be supportive of the process. Further, they need to know what the consequences will be if they do not comply. Are they willing to be disciplined? Discipline for not supporting this key business initiative can include anything up to and including termination. Always be direct. Always be ethical with these individuals. Key number 2 is to create an honest, accurate, clearly articulated assessment of talent gaps and requirements. This is very important to keep in mind when you are working with the keys to success and working with the champions. You must have an accurate, honest, clearly articulated assessment Page 3

15 process in place for each position. There are two areas to look at for this key: the quantitative and qualitative issues that you need to bring to the table. You need to have real, hard data when you re working with succession planning, because there can be an emotional side to this process. You may encounter some jealousy, or some aspects can be misconstrued and misunderstood. It s easiest to confront these issues when you can rely on the hard data. Quantitative data includes your turnover rates, your short and long term competency gaps, and the cost of hiring and training new employees. In addition, you need to know what are the relevant metrics for each of the functional areas. What is driving your revenue? What are your costs savings? What are you losses? Then, there s the qualitative side. Have you been using employee satisfaction surveys to track how your employees are responding to the changes in the environment? Do you have feedback instruments in place that your leaders can use both formally and informally? We recommend that you add a commercially developed 360 degree feedback instrument. This allows you to evaluate positions from every angle: the person s peers, supervisors, and the people who report to him. This is a great way to discover fascinating information about hidden talents and capabilities that may be unknown to the person s supervisor. Finally, do you conduct exit interviews to gather data to understand why people are leaving the company? This might be your only opportunity to find out what is making people unhappy, and some people can only be honest when they know there won t be any pushback or consequences. All these instruments are crucial in helping individuals find out their strengths and weaknesses. You need to be able to demonstrate the realities of the situation, and you need credible data to work with. What are some of the approaches that work with these key? First Page 4

16 and foremost, you need to keep decision makers informed of how well the succession plan is progressing. Keep all employees involved. There should be nothing secret about this process. For the decision makers, I call it CEO-izing your data findings. By CEO-ize, I mean, keep it short; keep it concise; and keep it objective. CEOs are busy people. They don t have time to read long reports with a lot of information, so keep them short and to the point. Think executive summary. That s what the CEO wants. Also, keep it evidence based, especially in family owned businesses. Use a validated feedback tool to assess your talent pool. Those 360 degree instruments are great tools to have in place to assess everything properly. For those of you responsible for this project, always keep an open door. Be open minded, and probe for significant issues or barriers that may be damaging the process in the early stages. Be alert to people who might want to sabotage the process. Here is where your communication skills will come in handy. You need to know how to be an empathetic listener, how to diffuse defensive behavior, and how to stay on a solution-based approach. Remind everyone that there are benefits of this succession planning process. The downside to not doing the process and the consequences need to be foremost and up front at all times for review. Remember, it is perfectly okay to disagree. That is why we have that open mind and open door. Out of disagreement comes discussion. It s okay to table items until a thorough and valid research effort has been made. Once again, come back with the facts to back up and discuss with the individual or group that is having an issue. Page 5

17 SUCCESSION PLANNING MODULE FOUR CRITICAL KEYS THREE AND FOUR Female: Module Four Critical Keys Three And Four. In this module, we will talk about the critical keys three and four. Key 3 is start with executives and don t stop there, and key 4 is proactive, assertive implementation. Succession planning is not just a CEO thing. It s not just for executives and senior managements levels. Surveys show that 55 percent of respondents say their organization does not have a formal succession planning in place. Ten percent of them said they had one but only on the executive level. Their thinking is that it s only at the executive level where the most critical positions need to be filled; however, that is incorrect. In today s rapidly changing business environment, it is not just the CEOs that require succession plans. You also have the chief financial offers, the chief information officers, and even human resources people play critical roles. Likewise, when you look at the different positions within the organization, how would your organization survive a sudden change if you lost one of your top information technology staff or key technical person? What would you do? How would you handle that type of situation? If you had a succession plan in place, you could have another key player prepared to take over. Everyone in the organization needs to understand that his or her job is important enough to be considered for training and development and that people in the organization can have the opportunity to move up. Succession planning can be complex, but it s not always out of your boundary when you have everyone involved and wanting to be part of this. That is why it is not just a CEO thing. The stakes are so high if you don t it, so high that failure to look at this transition can have a detrimental impact on the organization. Let s talk about some Page 1

18 approaches that work when you are in the succession planning process under key number 3. Start with you executive leadership and ensure that have their complete support and buy-in. Make sure that through the company website or newsletters they are promoting this and it is staying front and center in everyone s mind that this is critical for the organization. Make sure this goes through all the different management ranks and that you consider all the lateral moves that people can make too. One of the critical mistakes companies make is that they think this is a secret. It is not a secret. You can lose promising employees if you do not communicate this properly or if they think something is being kept from them. Remember, the more you can involve all team members, the more successful the plan will be. As you go through the succession planning process, you need to develop more than one successor for each key management position. Do not have all your eggs in one basket. What if you put all your time and energy into one individual and she chooses to leave? Well, a person just walked out the door into whom you ve invested a lot of time and money. So, now what? Remind those who have been tagged for possible advancement that there s no guarantee they will be promoted. Instead, this is an opportunity to prove their talents, skills, and competencies through this process, but there is no guarantee that they will be tagged for this position should the vacancy open. It is essential that you keep valid, written documentation of all the development activities, projects, and assignments given to any individual throughout the process. Who is tagged as a possible replacement? Use valid competency assessments. Pinpoint those competencies. Have working knowledge. Have financial analysis and technical skills assessed. Make sure you know the work habits and professional behaviors that are required to make that key Page 2

19 management position work. What are the values that are critical for each position? Examine the records of individuals who have been successful in that position in the past. What are the on-going strengths they possessed? Are there any identified vulnerabilities that would be created if that key employee suddenly left? What are the real world issues when you have a one of a kind position? For example, a person who has intellectual property or has designed a product and is now leaving to work for your key competitor, how do you survive this? Or what if your organization is small and many of the positions are essential to your long term survivability? Are you capable of filling the gaps? What would be the damage to your business? This is where succession planning is critical your organization no matter the size of your business and the solution to these real world problems. Key number 4 is to be proactive and assertive when planning. Succession planning must have a clear leader. Someone must be designated to be the individual who is spear heading this effort and is responsible for making sure it is moving through the organization. This is not time for wishful thinking. Oh, this is a great thing to do, and I m just going to ask someone to head it up. No. It s a full time project that needs to be managed. You need to be responsible in finding the right person to manage it. Don t get caught up in the fairness of it. Get caught up in the strategic needs for it. The best thing is to have that clear leader where power has been vested. This person has to have accountability and clout, and the clout needs to come from the senior most people in the organization who have said, We need to develop the next generation. We need to have objective standards for the skills the jobs will require in the near and long term future. You need someone who can promote this process and get buy-in at all levels of the organization. This clear Page 3

20 leader has to be able to bring to the attention of the key decision makers when certain people are not on board. This leader needs to be proactive and preventative, always looking ahead at what could be the downside if this plan wasn t in place and working through it before a crisis happens. You will always have time to work on a crisis, but look at what the crisis will cost you in terms of money and the emotional toll. So, the leader has to be assertive and unwavering in the confidence that the plan is working, because it has been thought through to create strategies. The strategies have been turned into action plans, and the action plans have specific deadlines and specific individuals who are responsible for getting them done. That s the accountability to someone. Under accountability, you have consequences as well as rewards specifically laid out. This is key, especially if you those individuals who support the plan to your face but are ready to backstab and sabotage behind your back instead of getting on board. To deal with this, a reporting and communication process is in place. The communication needs to go up and down the chain of command. Progress reports are crucial to keep everyone in the loop and prevent rumors from beginning. This is an ongoing process. It does not stop. What are some of the approaches that we know will work? You need to have a clear vision. Begin with the end in mind of what you want this process to provide for you, and know where this process is going. With that in mind, you have to have clear goals and deadlines to stay on track. Document all the steps in the process. Keep those accurate and detailed notes safe. Communicate routine reports, progress reports to leadership and staff on a regular basis. This can be your webpage, your internal reports, your proof materials. Make sure you communicate to the leadership team on a regular basis. Champion progress. If there are blips along Page 4

21 the way, refine them as needed. One real world situation is that the world of work is a busy place. If you have managers who say they are too busy to work on this plan, key decision makers must communicate to managers that this is a crucial strategy for long term success and the viability of the organization that everyone needs to work on. Some suggestions for dealing with this include: have black out times set aside. During those times, you are only allowed to work on succession planning. Conduct succession planning workshops. Let s say it: you can mandate it, and that means if it s not taken seriously, there will be consequences. Look at the what if. What if one of those critical individuals were lost and you didn t have a replacement in place? [End of recording.] Page 5

22 SUCCESSION PLANNING MODULE FIVE CRITICAL KEYS FIVE AND SIX Female: Module Five Critical Keys Five And Six. In this module, we will talk about keys five and six. Key number five is comprehensive employee capability and development tracking, and key number six is focus on the bottom line, financial acumen, and command of business drivers. As you go through this process, you will likely encounter what I call the all-too-easy, internal bias. This comes out as underestimating, devaluing, and overlooking our own. So, don t underestimate the value of your employees, and don t overlook your own staff. You have talent in house that you haven t uncovered yet. Potential can be hidden from you. That s why it s important for you to know your employees outside of work. What hobbies let them use their natural talents that the work place doesn t showcase? Do they use leadership skills outside of work that are not required in their job descriptions? How do they want to grow? What are their career aspirations? What are their interests? What do they want to learn? What approach that works for this key is a mentoring program? This is an area of its own, but we can touch on it here. Mentoring programs can be effective and work best when employees are assigned to them. They have a prescribed program that takes the mentoree through a day in the life of an executive or key leader. Another approach that works is for human resources to do audits on a routine basis. Look at the individual developments plans or IDPs that are usually part of the performance review process. Make sure people are given opportunities to grow and develop skill in areas where the organization would like them to be more skilled. Make sure the audits and performance reviews are done properly. Sometimes, the IDP can be seen as an administrative task Page 1

23 without purpose or meaning. To work, they need to have meat and purpose. Develop your own internal tracking system. You can develop your own in-house or use a commercially available software system to help you with this. Sometimes, leaders have favorites that they want to promote. There s always the golden girl or golden boy in the group. What if you don t have a valid assessment in place? You don t know if you golden boy or golden girl has the skills and talents needed for the promotion. With valid instruments, you can assess their strengths and weaknesses and have an IDP in place. Another solution is to have a training budget that is strong enough to cover their costs to offer all employees the needed skill planning, not just the chosen few. The organization can find itself in the position of having a short bench where it doesn t have the talent inhouse. That s the rude awakening that comes when you don t have a succession plan in place. With the succession plan, you will always know that you have the necessary people in-house and don t have to go outside and define people. What if you have a staff member who has the skills of the past but isn t positioned with the skills to take on the challenges of the future? Organizations need to have development plans in place. A succession plan shows the different skill sets and competencies necessary. Each employee needs to have an IDP for when a vacancy occurs. Key number six, last but not least, is where we focus on the bottom line. Keeping the big thing, the big thing. Let s be honest, a business is in the business of making a profit, or if you are a non-forprofit or a government agency, then it s to perpetuate the mission and meet the needs of the clients who use your services. If we keep the big thing, the big thing, people moving into higher level positions need to have a strong command of financial analysis skills. They need to know how to budget, how to forecast, how to understand the key Page 2

24 metrics that keep an organization successful and profitable. They need know what the financial indicators that mark an up-turn or a down-turn, what the economic indicators are, and how to read the market as things change. These are crucial business essentials that people need to be on top of. What are some approaches that help with this key? It s important to be active in business organizations and keep up with business trends and processes in your industry group. Again, provide on-going training either in-house or through outside educational resources. Let s face it: today, who doesn t have some opportunity to learn? It s a 24/7 information beast out there, and there are online courses available to people willing to invest the time and effort to stay up to date in their chosen career area. Another approach is to shadow a colleague who is more skilled in a particular area. For example, let s say I m not really strong in budgeting. In the succession plan, I d be assigned to someone who is most skilled at math. With an assignment or project, I d learn by doing. Use the 360 degree instrument to identify weaknesses. Then, match the employee with someone in-house who has strength in those skill sets. Another approach is to build an advisory team. This team is tasked with sharing their knowledge with others in the succession plan in any area that focuses on the bottom line. Realize that you have to do standardize all your succession planning processes. As we close out this key, think of your own situations. What happens when a senior manager wants to hire a crony or a buddy? What if you have an employee who is more likable than another person because he knows how to network or play the in-house political game? Sometimes, these people are called empty suits. Or what if you have a confident employee who has some life issue going on like child care? But this has never impacted her performance or Page 3

25 productivity. Maybe, someone has held her back because of the fear the one day these personal issues might start coming into the work place and impacting the business. Are you leaving someone out of the loop who needs to go through the process to help the organization stay focused? I hope you can see how this and perpetuate the success of the business. That s really our mission: to perpetuate the entity. You have to conduct business and that costs money. Not only do you need to focus on today, but you also have to look at the future. You have to assure everyone that your succession plan will be carried out in the most ethical of manners and will provide the company with optimal achievement, give it financial health, keep it viable, and sustain it so it can grow. Let s recap some of the areas you need to be aware of to bring your succession plan to fruition. We talked about how important it is to identify a key leader who will be responsible for spear heading this effort. It is essential that the organization know that this individual has the respect and the confidence of the senior most executives to implement the process in the designated time frame. No one individual can do this alone. The whole organization will need to take part, but everyone has to respect and honor the individual task who has seen that the succession planning process is part of a strategy to ensure the longevity of the organization. This succession process exists to seek out future leaders. This process is a system for finding those starting employees and making sure they are ready to take on key positions in the future. Encourage your managers to be out there understanding the employees beyond the day-to-day. What are their interests? Give them interesting assignments that let them shine in areas their normal jobs don t provide. This will help them to buy in and see the benefits of the succession planning process. You also need to look at your corporate culture. Where Page 4

26 do you want to go? Where do you need to change? A succession plan requires you to look at your values and principals. It asks you to say, Where do we want to be in the future? And what will it take to get there? The only way to know your plan is working is to track its results. You want to be able to rely on the long term goals and objectives, identify workforce development needs, and be aware of workforce trends and predictions. In the past, succession planning often targeted only key leadership positions. Today, you have to look at key positions across all job categories. Employees need to be ready for these new leadership roles. They have to be ready to step up to the plate and develop a diverse work force that enables decision makers to look at the future makeup of the whole organization. What critical positions do you need to be staffing up now? What are the current and future competencies those positions will require? If you have to go outside, what recruitment strategy will you use to find talented people? You must ensure that key employees understand their careers path and the roles they are being developed to fill. We need to focus resources on key employee retention. You have to know employment trends in your area to know the roles you will have when a difficult time comes. When succession planning is done right, it is truly an investment in both the company and the human capital of the organization. The entire organization benefits from creating career paths and developing critical criteria to fill positions as they open. Whether a change is required because of normal business conditions or because of a death or defection, the organization will be ready to act quickly, decisively, and effectively. Only then will a company know that it is ready to conduct business. [End of recording.] Page 5

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