- Do you know where your next generation of leadership will come from?
- Do you currently have the bench strength to fill the shoes of retiring executives and other key staff?
- Are you clear about what additional or unique skills you will need to successfully lead your organization into the future?
Answering these questions is what Succession Planning is all about. The number one objective of a Succession Planning initiative is to ensure that your organization has the talent to achieve your current and future business objectives.
4 Phase Succession Planning Process
We use a 4 phase approach to help our clients create a powerful Succession Planning process.
Phase 1: Business Goals & Strategies
What are your short-, medium- and long-term business objectives and strategies? The most effective Succession Planning initiatives start by answering these questions.
Asking them ensures that there is a direct link between Succession Planning and the organization's business needs. This link is critical to the success of the Succession Planning initiative and the overall productivity and profitability of the organization.
Phase 2: Leadership Success Profile
Once you are clear about your current and future organizational goals and strategic intent, the questions become:
- What kind of leaders do you need to meet those goals?
- How do you translate those leadership requirements into profiles for potential successor talent?
There is no better source for identifying the skills, knowledge and behavioral styles that will drive the continued success of your organization than your existing leadership team.
Interviewing your current executives and other key contributors taps into their intimate knowledge of the business and leverages their unique position to forecast the implications for successor talent in achieving the emerging business strategies.
These interviews are instrumental in identifying the core skills and competencies for future leaders that form the basis of a Leadership Success Profile.
Phase 3: Leadership Successor Talent Selection
The Leadership Success Profile, developed in the previous phase, is the cornerstone for determining which individuals are potential successors to key roles. You now have a customized, competency-based instrument against which you can assess your existing talent pool and determine the executive leadership capability within the enterprise.
Use the Leadership Success Profile as the basis for developing appropriate assessment and selection tools (e.g. 9-Box Leadership Performance/Potential Matrix and 360° or 180° Surveys).
Review assessment results and conduct Readiness Interviews with identified successors. The last step of the selection process involves drafting Individual Development Plans (IDP) for each identified potential successor.
Phase 4: Leadership Successor Audit
The Successor Audit provides an enterprise-wide data and assessment roll-up. It is a thorough analysis of the critical leadership talent within an organization.
The audit also provides insights into how far the available successor talent pool is liable to take the organization along the path of achieving its business goals, and where it falls short.
The audit is an invaluable tool for executives and others responsible for ensuring the future leadership bench strength of the organization. It provides the data to determine exactly where you are on the path and how far you still need to go to ensure that your organization has the right leaders for a successful future.
Related Articles