Why is it so hard to get succession planning right?
Its importance to ensure leadership continuity is not in doubt. Yet, succession planning continues to be a challenge for many organizations and eludes others completely. Is it the process? It’s true there is no one size fits all approach when it comes to succession planning. Or is it because it’s the only business planning process which involves emotion and triggers the ego’s insecurities?
Peter’s Principle is alive
We’ve all heard of it! The art of continuing to promote people in an organization until they reach a level of incompetency. The sad thing is, everyone in a large company will be able to come up with an example of this principle. Does this principle explain why, in a Deloitte Insights survey , that 86% of leaders thought succession planning was urgent or important but unfortunately only 13% of them felt it was done well?
Or is it that succession planning can often be decided by a close knit few behind closed doors? The outcome often favoring the confident, socially skilled and political masters rather than recognizing the hidden talent. Let’s take a look at a couple of the common challenges.
Investing in your future
From a board, shareholder and even economic perspective succession planning is key. Retaining and developing the best people for the business’ future. With a possibility to reduce expensive external hiring costs too. All good. However, some organizations fail to incorporate the future into their succession planning process.
The identification and assessment of potential candidates is the result of looking at how they are performing in their current role. John is a great Financial Controller. It’s obvious he should be the next CFO.
Without factoring in where the company is going strategically, what are the skills, capabilities or even mindset needed, how can a business effectively make the right succession choice?
And it’s not just for the senior roles. Succession planning is equally important for technology roles, for example, where certain expertise is sought after. Or based on the strategic plan maybe the current core technology will be outsourced, and the future Head of Product Development will need to have strong people management and be commercially savvy, instead of the technically strong incumbent? Melanie, as the go-to knowledgeable software architect, on current performance rating might be in contention as a succession candidate until the future is taken into consideration.
Assessing future scenario performance
Here’s where another challenge surfaces. Most companies recognize that assuming that a candidate is good in a current role doesn’t automatically guarantee they will thrive when promoted. Instead, companies have found a way to measure a candidate’s performance against predefined requirements for the role. The current incarnation of the role.
This is where another challenge pops up. Job specifications – generally written by HR – do not easily translate into personal requirements that can be measured onto somebody performing in a different role.
What’s needed is a set of realistic and intertwined role play scenarios, reflecting a full set of responsibilities for the role in line with elements from the company’s strategic plan. Making the role play as realistic as possible, for instance adding time pressure in solving scenarios, will quickly reveal the naked, true behaviour of a person.
Acknowledging what it means for your leaders
Succession planning requires a lot of your current leaders, even beyond the identification and assessment of candidates. They’re also expected to support and train them. As well as ensuring critical information and knowledge is shared, they might have to help build a relationship, maybe within their own existing network, for their successor to replace them.
And, that’s the crux of it. Organizations expect their leaders to be mature, self-aware individuals who can rationally accept that all this succession planning work means they’re not indispensable. As a current leader you’re looking at your own shelf-life date. No wonder, the ego’s insecurities are triggered. For those leaders who aren’t looking forward to retirement, or haven’t been identified as Board level or CEO successors themselves – what then?
In a large international high-tech company, the CTO had done all that was expected of him. Identified a successor, executing on a development plan and had even invested in an external personal coach for the candidate. All great. Until the CTO commented that he’d support the candidate until he became a threat to CTO’s own Board position. Eeerrr. Wait! What?
Unsurprisingly, about six months later, the succession candidate left. The company was back to square one and significant investment lost.
Making succession planning a success
People are complicated. By its very nature, succession planning can bring out their competitive side. To minimize the potential negative impact, I’ve found these pointers invaluable.
- Be transparent about the succession planning process. Don’t do it behind closed doors.
- Ensure your process of identification involves the business not just HR. Strategic goals and plans need to be incorporated into the selection criteria.
- Adopt a realistic assessment approach which allows candidates to be measured against what is expected of them in a future based scenario with appropriate real-life pressures.
- Provide coaching not only for the candidates but also for the current leaders. Without the existing leaders being fully committed to all that succession planning really means to everyone involved, the best process in the world can be undermined.
Succession planning is a delicate balance of managing everyone’s expectations with what’s best for the business. Effective identification, realistic assessment and ongoing coaching allows organizations to be confident about their future leadership team, maintain team cohesion and achieve business objectives.