Succession Plans Aren’t Just for Executives

I’ve been getting caught up on some of my blog reading now that I am back from vacation, and just saw this interesting post from Jason Corsello over at the The Human Capitalist on succession planning. He takes a look at how Apple has been the subject of much media interest regarding Steve Jobs’ health and the company’s succession plan.

Jason goes on to make the point of how some large companies, including Oracle have even stated they do not have an active succession plan. This is where I almost fell off my chair. No succession plan? Really?

Maybe because we are working in the talent management space day in, day out at Halogen, I’ve come to think this is a given. Doesn’t it just make good business sense to have a succession plan in place? Think of it as insurance for the future. The post also discusses how “executive succession plans typically only come into play when a CEO announces their impending retirement.”

Executive succession plans are great, but there needs to be a succession plan for the whole organization to build a strong leadership pipeline. Without a pool of leaders to draw from, succession planning can fall apart as people move up the ranks, because at a certain point, you don’t have any more leaders ready to move up. Additionally, the org-chart replacement model of succession planning also fails here because it doesn’t allow for attrition and other factors. Ideally succession planning should focus on developing people rather than merely naming them as replacements.

If you don’t have succession planning in place or don’t know where to start, don’t let that stop you. Succession planning can be a relatively painless process when integrated with talent management. To get you started, I’d check out this research paper from William Rothwell, a leading succession planning expert and you can read more about how a company has actually started succession planning using information from employee appraisals and building from there.