Succession Planning – Critical Softer Aspects
- Vivek Kumar
- Sep 5, 2021
- 7 min read
Business Excellence Series Title – 9
(Succession Planning – 3/4)
While the organization may have a robust Succession planning process but addressing softer aspects through regular development discussions, counselling and personal influence hold the key for success of the intervention and consistent dividends to the enterprise.
Organizations groom successors for key roles, to ensure continuity and avoid any disruption in smooth functioning during transitions. Succession planning is not only extremely critical for sustainability and success of organizations, it is also immensely complex, with high chances of going wrong. There are innumerable cases globally, where organizations have successfully implemented it for multiple successions, but at the same time there are cases where inappropriate succession planning caused significant damage to business as well as reputation. Read my earlier article on succession planning
In one of the organizations where I was leading Human Resource function, we implemented the succession planning process for senior leadership team in very effective manner, but not without innumerable hurdles. By collectively overcoming those challenges, we were able to achieve remarkable outcomes. The external hiring of leaders decreased from 80% to less than 35% in 3 years, leading to increased motivation of employees witnessing immense internal growth opportunities, reduced transition time during change of incumbent in leadership roles and significant cost savings. Read my earlier article elaborating on the process followed by us in the organization
Although Succession Planning is a well-known intervention with well understood importance, but still scarcely implemented because of complex and unique threats emerging during the process, that are more related to “How” rather than “What” and may significantly vary from organization to organization. As described in more detail in the above article, we built our robust Succession Planning process on six distinct pillars, namely –
Identification of critical roles
Talent Reviews
Identification of Successors
Individual Development Plans
Governance Mechanism
Linkage with Leadership Hiring Process
The model comprehensively depicting all related aspects of Succession Planning in terms of intended outcomes, above mentioned major pillars of the process and soft critical issues to be managed for effective implementation is shared below.
As these steps were executed very effectively, with involvement of all functional and business leaders, the journey was not smooth. Many hurdles were faced by every stage, that needed to be resolved on the spot. The challenges were not only in terms of finding time and commitment of stakeholders involved, but many more related to softer aspects.
We will discuss some of the tricky issues faced and the way they were handled to ensure that the stated objectives are achieved, by agile interventions and timely maneuvering. The idea is to share these experiences with the readers, who are implementing or plan to implement this initiative, so that they can proactively plan and take required actions much in time, before they start derailing the whole process.
WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) - Sense of insecurity
It’s important to make it clear that the goal of succession planning is not to make current leaders replaceable (which happens in some organizations and leaders being fearful of that, do not support the process) but to secure the continuity and growth of the organization.
As soon as succession planning is initiated for any set of roles, the current role holders need to be clarified on their future roles changes/ growth opportunities to remove their sense of insecurity. As successors become ready to occupy the role in 2-3 years, the current incumbent needs to be voluntarily prepared to move on to new roles. In absence of this clarity, the role holders themselves become a hurdle in succession planning process. On the other hand, if current role holder is aware about his own growth opportunity and is looking forward to that movement, he/she goes an extra mile to see that the successor is made ready as per planned timeline.
Why do I need succession planning– I am very alert, I am very vibrant and I have no intention to retire – Sheldon Adelson
Do I want to take up the role?
It is important that the succession Planning process gets aligned with the career plan of identified successors. It is possible that the organization thinks that a person could be right fit for Head of Technology, whereas the person wants to develop himself as Head of Supply Chain Management or vice versa.
A development discussion with the identified successor is important to know his/ her keenness to take up the position in future and readiness to put in required effort and investment for the same. During discussion with one of the HiPot candidate, it was gathered that he was not interested in building his career towards the target position of a Business Head, but wanted to move to a specialist role. It was good to know the same before the journey started, as the development plan of that HiPot could undergo complete change as per his priorities, at initiation stage itself. If the same is discovered at a later stage, most of investment made in development of that person till that time, would have been a waste.
Readiness of organization to announce successors?
This is a double edged sword and needs to be suitably handled, keeping in view the organization culture. In some organizations with higher trust level, there will be no harm in announcing, where as in others with trust deficit and lesser employee engagement, this may trigger significant unrest and resultant loss of talent.
We decided neither to announce nor to make it confidential. As potential successors were told about their selection and organization’s plan on investment for their development, their motivation and commitment level went significantly higher. It was also shared that the list is not static and will be reviewed every six months. During these reviews, there was provision of dropping some candidates as well as adding few new ones, based on the ongoing evaluations/ reviews. This helped in spreading positive message to other employees also, as they could also aspire for inclusion, based on their contribution.
It is important to appreciate the difference between high performers and high potential employees, and accordingly develop motivation strategies for them. At the same time, organization should be ready to accept some attrition over time, as it is not possible to completely satisfy growth aspirations of all HiPots.
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) by some HiPos
Once employees know that selections are being made for successors of key roles in the organizations, all high performers expect that they will be included in the list. However, the focus of the exercise is to identify candidates with High performance as well as high potential, that too for limited slots. Therefore, it is natural that many aspirants do not find place in the list and get demotivated. This may also lead to exit of some high performing resources. The organization need to ensure that they make sufficient efforts to ringfence all good employees and minimize their exits.
We took an approach that all HiPots in the organization should either find place as successors in succession planning process, or should have clarity on their growth path through development discussions. This helped in enhancing motivation of HiPots and minimizing loss of talent. A similar exercise of development discussion and counselling was also very helpful for high performing employees, who do not display high potential but are still important to the organization.
Senior leadership Commitment
Senior leadership has to be behind the Succession Plan, not only in supporting role but also participating and actively taking rightful decisions for making it a success. They need to take out time and give much needed priority to support development plans of the successors.
At the same time, they have an important role in managing softer aspects related to other high performers in their teams, who could not find place as successors. To maintain the motivation of these employees, it was clarified by the leadership team in the organization that it is a dynamic selection and review mechanism, where there may be entries and exits from the identified incumbent list. This was substantiated by actual changes in the list along with inclusions/ exclusions of some incumbents based on objective considerations.
Operational leadership Engagement
Likewise, the operational leaders need to have complete buy-in into the need and process, as in case of their lack of involvement the whole initiative may easily get derailed. It needs to be ensured that all senior leaders have one-on-one discussion with their next level managers on regular interval, to keep them updated about the progress and clarify any doubts, to ensure that these leaders are actively supportive.
For smooth implementation of initiative, it was ensured that they are involved in discussions quite at early stage, periodically updated on developments, encouraged to contribute in the plan by participating in different capacities and are also recognized for their contribution.
Managing arrogance
It has been observed that as the identified successors are conveyed about their selection and they are put into the development journey, some of them start feeling proud to the extent that employees around them start experiencing arrogance in their behavior. Many employees are anyway unhappy on the fact that one of their peers has been identified to become their boss, and on top of it such unacceptable behavior leads to enhancing inter-personal conflicts in the team, leading to decrease in acceptability of the identified successor as future leader.
It has been our experience that proactively counseling the successors on such behavioral aspects in development discussions as well as during regular mentoring really helps in their ability to retain and further gain acceptability in the team over time, as they become ready to take up the senior position.
What if Successor leaves?
One of the dilemmas for some leaders used to be that what if the potential successor leaves after so much of investment? The answer was simple that what if he stays and we don’t invest? We lose opportunity of having a talented internal successor!
There were cases, where some people left, while being groomed and also some candidates who were dropped due to some serious business/ behavioral issue. These have to be accepted as business risks, which organization takes while pursuing long term strategies.
Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price we will have to pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile - Vince Lombardi
There are many other soft aspects which various organizations encounter, depending on their internal maturity and organization culture. These have to be addressed sooner than later, with help of internal deliberations or involvement of external experts. In case, such issues are pushed under the carpet, they have tremendous ability to grow from ant to elephant and thwart the whole initiative.
In my next and the last one in this series of 4 articles on Succession Planning, I will delve on challenges related to succession planning specifically in case of family businesses and possible actions that should be taken to ensure a smooth transition from one generation to another.
For Share and Like – use below links
For any Services or further Insights/ Support - Contact using form below
Comments