Succession Planning helps mitigate business risk
June 26th, 2009 • by Craig Endicott • Posted in Talent Management • 1 Comment »In your organisation who is responsible for Succession Planning? Is it owned at C-level, is it owned by individual line managers or is it owned by HR?
OK, OK, this question is a lot like asking who is responsible for Talent Management. But for me, Succession Planning is an interesting topic because its an easy way to introduce the concept of Talent Management to people that are not HR practitioners because Succession Planning is all about managing risk.
Risk Management is something that anybody in the organisation can understand. Risk Management leads to conversations about Business Continuity, resilience and inevitably to scenario planning and at that point Succession Planning becomes a 'hard' topic with none of the 'fluff' of other talent management concepts (eg Recognition, Career Planning and Skills and Leadership Development)perceived by those outside HR. In the context of risk management Succession Planning is vital in keeping the organisation running through periods of forced change.
The traditional HR view of Succession Planning is fairly straight-forward. The short-term emergency is typically about filling a vacated seat, usually of a senior executive and sometimes of key technical staff. This point is well articulated in the clip: Refilling The Pipeline.
The medium-term is about mapping the current workforce to future organisational design and understanding the development needs of a group of 'High Potentials' that may go on to succeed members of the current senior management team. The long-term looks at the capabilities needed by the organisation and the career path from entry level jobs through to C-level.
The traditional approach to Succession Planning takes a linear perspective, based on 'business as usual' conditions, geared to the higher echelons, reinforcing the organisational 'chain of command'. It is biased towards seniority and strata as a framework and on filling vacancies as an outcome rather than replacing talented individuals. Replacing talented individuals is many times more difficult than filling a vacancy and, in organisations with flatter structures, Succession Planning requires more creativity.
