2. “Succession planning is "a 'deliberate and
systematic effort' designed to ensure the
continued effective performance of an
organization, division, department, or work group
by making provision for the development and
replacement of key people over time.“
- William Rothwell
3.
4. Changes in direct reports’ roles
Require successor candidates with a breadth
of experience
80% increased
5.
6.
7. Despite a significant amount of time
spent on succession management,
only 28% of current leaders were pre-
identified in a succession plan.
8. Modeling Fortune’s 100 Best
Companies
Invest in professional
development?
Formalized development
plans?
Detail or rotational
assignments?
9. Does good work
Follows orders
Gets along well with
others
Knows the organization
Has tenure
10. Lack of management
experience
Difficulty in
communicating
Dealing with
underperformers
11. High Potential Employees (HIPOs)
Can be managers or non-managers
Capable of succeeding at a more senior and
critical role
Defined by:
o Personal aspirations
o Engagement
o Functional ability
12.
13. Google’s Project Oxygen
Most desired manager traits
Technical abilities ranked last
Coaching was most important
o One-on-one meetings
o Specific feedback
o Solutions tailored to employee
14. Evaluate HIPOs in simulated scenarios
Not considered formal training; but
learning can and does occur
Can be used in promotion decisions
15. Planning and organizing
Problem solving
Communicating in writing
Thinking creatively
Organization-specific competencies
16. Inbox exercise
Writing summary exercise
Group negotiating exercise
Videotaping sessions
Other sessions on leadership skills
Focus on peer interaction
18. Problem solving
Strategic thinking
Organize thoughts in a logical manner
Persuasive writing
Concise, compelling
Writing on a deadline
19. Task to complete
Financial component
Separate functional areas
Leadership role
Cooperation
Encouraging consensus
Organizational benefit
20.
21.
22.
23. Presented by management personnel
Generally targeted to a specific level
Only record observed behaviors
Oral and written feedback
Presented individually
Focus on positives
Casual setting
24. Know their strengths
Identify areas for development
Expand knowledge
Develop strategic perspective
Gain leadership experience
25. Formalized professional training
College courses
o Standard classroom instruction
o Online
Executive education courses
o Harvard University Kennedy School of Government
o Duke University
o North Carolina State University
o University of North Carolina
26. Each course is like an interactive textbook,
featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes, and
projects
Coursera provides universal access to the
world’s best education, partnering with top
universities and organizations
EdX is a not-for-profit enterprise composed of
30 leading global institutions
27. In 2012, Duke University began using MOOCs
Original goal was to promote innovation in
teaching and learning within the Duke campus
community
Since that time, 30 instructors from 28
departments have developed 31 MOOCs on
Coursera
Resulting in 2.8 million enrollments and
issuing more than 72,000 certificates
28. Detail assignments
Collateral assignments
Special projects, work groups
Recommended reading assignments
Videos (TED Talks)
Developing presentations
Mentoring
29. Assess Leadership Needs Based on Future Demand
Assess leadership capability required to achieve
strategic goals, not just potential future vacancies in
current roles.
Identify Potential Successors Across the
Organization
Select successors from across the
enterprise through greater transparency, do not just
identify future leaders earlier in their careers
Prepare Leadership Bench for Variety of Futures
Prepare the leadership bench for a variety of futures to
hedge against uncertainty, instead of preparing
leadership through upward career paths
Reevaluate Leadership Team Fit
Continue succession management beyond leader
placement by reassessing senior leaders' fit against
shifting strategic goals.
Strategic Talent
Meetings
General Mills reframed the structure of the
traditional talent review so that leaders set the
agenda and discussion based on their unique
business priorities rather than a fixed agenda
based on talent management data.
HR and Business Leaders at MTS India
partnered to create concrete future leadership
requirements by translating organizational
strategy into defined future critical roles.
Transparent
Talent Planning
Process
Corning redefined its talent planning process to
increase the visibility of talent across the
organization and establish transparency
between the organization and employees.
Dually-Deployable
Successor
Candidates
UIL’s criteria for identifying high potential
employees requires that each candidate have
the potential to serve as a leader in at least two
departments at the organization.
OmniSuite
Leader/Strategic
Alignment Matrix
OmniSuite periodically reevaluates each
member of the leadership team against key
strategic objectives to surface development
opportunities, strategic risks, and
misalignment.
1
2
3
4
Strategy-Driven Critical
Role Forecasting
8
Hello, I’m Jim Barnes. I’m a Senior Advisor for the U.S. Department of Labor - OSHA. I’ve been responsible for agency training programs externally and internally. I’m currently working on succession planning and career development initiatives for the agency.
Successful global companies all have a formal succession planning process. With a record amount being invested in talent and leadership development, leadership assessment centers are being more widely used to measure many different types of job related skills and abilities, including interpersonal skills, communication skills, planning and organizing, and analytical skills.
Today I’m going to briefly discuss how this process can be used to make succession planning efforts in your organization more effective.
Succession planning is a means for an organization to ensure its continued effective performance through leadership continuity.
Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing internal people with the potential to fill key business leadership positions in the company. Succession planning increases the availability of experienced and capable internal employees that are prepared to assume these roles as they become available. This process exemplifies an investment in an organization’s own human capital.
As CEO turnover at many large public companies averages about once every three years, companies that lack qualified succession candidates are often forced to hire from the outside. But the CEO isn't the only position that requires succession planning.
If an organization suddenly loses its chief information officer, chief financial officer, or another senior manager, it can have a considerable negative impact. That's because staffers are often required to maintain their existing responsibilities in addition to accepting additional assignments from their managers. This chain of cascading delegation may directly affect everyone in an organization, even though only a single position has been replaced.
In today’s environment, organizations need more from their leaders. Each year, 14% of leadership positions are newly created. This creates demand for successors who can take on unexpected new roles.
And there are significant changes within their roles, which occur every two years.
Companies are trying to do more with less. Matrix organizations are the rule, rather than the exception. Leaders are being asked to do more.
Expanding responsibilities in leadership roles will require successor candidates with a breadth of experience. Changes in direct reports’ roles have also led to changing requirements for leaders.
There are a variety of formal succession activities. Assessment is a key component among these. A significant amount of time is also spent on development plans.
There are also a variety of informal succession activities. Many of these activities involve discussions, establishing key relationships, and providing mentoring opportunities.
But surprisingly, a recent study showed that just over a quarter of current leaders were selected as a result of succession planning. So let’s talk about how organizations conduct succession planning and how they select managers.
When it comes to employee development, the organizations on the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For list are inclined to spend more time and money investing in employees. On average, the 100 Best provide 73 hours of on-the-job training for full-time employees, compared to 38 hours among non-winning list applicants. These companies invest almost double.
From creating individualized development plans for each employee to placing a greater emphasis on succession planning, these companies understand the value of developing and promoting their employees. They realize that retention is a competitive advantage whose value will only increase over time. Source: Fortune Magazine
So I ask you to think about how your organization plans for manager succession. Does your organization invest in training and development? How does it determine its future leaders?
Often times – too often, in fact – organizations simply promote their best technical employee. And there seem to be many good reasons to do so.
Quality of the work produced
Well-liked among peers
Length of service
Do any of these sound familiar? But more often that not, these aren’t the right reasons to place an individual in a leadership role.
I was at a conference earlier this year in Disney World, and used an example that many of us may be familiar with. In the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Mickey was given a leadership role based on his technical expertise.
Has this ever happened in your organization?
This approach doesn’t always work for a variety of reasons. Often, these new managers lack previous experience managing people. They are unprepared to deal with subordinates who don’t demonstrate the same skills or work ethic.
As we see, Mickey has some challenges when the broom workers don’t exactly follow his wishes.
For an organization to plan for the replacement of key leaders, potential leaders must first be identified and prepared to take on those roles. These potential leaders are what’s known as High Potential Employees (HIPOs).
A high-potential employee (HIPO) is defined as someone who is capable of rising to and succeeding at a more senior, critical role. The employee’s HIPO potential is defined in terms of three attributes:
Personal aspiration; does the employee want advancement?
Engagement; is the employee happy at the company?
Functional ability; does the employee have the skills necessary to succeed in a leadership role?
So the first challenge is to identify the employees that possess all three attributes. Let me show you why this is so important.
In terms of future success, High-potential employees (HIPOs) are more than 50% more beneficial to the business than non-HIPO employees, yet very few employees fall into this group. Half of the workforce has less than a 5% chance of advancing to and succeeding at the next level, creating a large gap in leadership.
Likewise, only 8% of employees have better than a 75% chance of succeeding at the next level, creating a finite number of candidates with the potential to succeed in critical roles. Given the scarcity of HIPOs, the rising gap in leadership skills, and the high impact HIPOs can have on the business, organizations must carefully identify and develop those with potential.
Let’s talk for a minute about the importance of coaching in the employee development and succession planning process.
Google has had a surprisingly difficult time retaining employees. So Google launched an internal initiative called Project Oxygen. After scouring years of performance reviews, feedback surveys and more, Project Oxygen identified eight characteristics employees at Google admire most in their managers.
Surprisingly, technical abilities came in dead last. The most important was coaching. Be a good coach!
This trait involves providing specific feedback and having regular one-on-one meetings with employees. It also involves offering solutions that are tailored to each employee's strengths.
It’s okay to talk to your staff about career aspirations when trying to identify your HIPOs.
So once you’ve identified your HIPOs, how do you move forward with their development?
Leadership assessment center consists of exercises that reflect job content and types of problems and scenarios faced on the job. The centers employ multiple assessment methods such as tests, activities, and simulation exercises to evaluate a wide range of competencies among participants.
These results can be used to make a variety of employment decisions regarding management candidates and also current managers within your organization. Leadership assessment centers have been known to produce valid outcomes for many organizations including future performance and promotion rates.
Leadership assessment centers can even be used in the managerial selection process. The assessment centers I’ve administered usually run three days. For this reason, the assessment process is more practical for, and usually conducted for, internal candidates.
These are generally considered to be the key leadership competencies.
Planning and Organizing - The ability to lay out work for the future and to track progress; ability to get own work done with available resources; ability to deploy organizational resources (including people) to get work done.
Problem Solving - The ability to gather relevant information about issues or situations, make sense of it, and select courses of action to enable work to go forward.
Communicating in Writing - The ability to convey information in writing; ability to create, edit, or summarize reports, memos, correspondence, or other documents.
Thinking Creatively - The ability to generate and accept new, unanticipated, or unconventional ideas or approaches.
Organization-specific Competencies – unique to the organization and considered essential for leadership success.
There are a variety of different activities that are utilized during the assessment center. During these activities, each of the observers records and categorizes behaviors for various participants. Over the course of the program, participants are observed by several of the observer team members in various exercises.
After each exercise, the observer rates participants on certain competencies. These ratings are based solely on observed behavior and are standardized through the use of behaviorally-anchored competency evaluation guides. There is a process for observers to discuss and reach consensus at the end of the observation period.
Indeed, it can be a somewhat challenging and even stressful experience for the participants. But seeing how the participants met this challenge – and which ones thrive – can be extremely helpful in assessing their future success as leaders.
Let’s take a look at each activity.
The Inbox Exercise consists of placing a participant in a mock scenario with some form of interim authority. The participant is given a list of items that must be addressed within a certain time frame. Email versions of this paper-based exercise are now becoming more common. We’re still old school at Department of Labor, so we provide paper copies of emails that had supposedly been sitting in the previous manager’s email inbox.
The participant is asked to review the items, evaluate conflicting issues, prioritize the responses, and determine courses of action. It’s up to the participant to determine what is important, and what is urgent. The exercise gives the evaluator some insight into the participant’s ability to perform the administrative functions of the position.
Here, we’re looking to see the participant’s ability to prioritize responsibilities, determine relationships between different events and occurrences, and coordinate appropriate responses and actions.
The Writing Summary Exercise consists of the participant preparing a written summary and solution to a proposed problem within the organization. Written communication is an essential management skill, but this exercise goes beyond simply turning a phrase.
This summary should incorporate various aspects of the scenario to which the participant has been exposed. Again, the participant is given the opportunity to effectively identify relationships between events which may, on the surface, seem unrelated.
Here, we’re looking to see the participant’s problem-solving skills, ability to think strategically, and organize their thoughts in a logical manner. They must draft persuasive written communication in a concise and compelling fashion.
And they have to complete this within a specified time frame. I can tell you this is not an easy exercise.
But for those who do well, it is a good indicator of their abilities.
The Group Negotiating Exercise consists of placing several participants in the room together and giving them a task to complete. We usually go with five in our groups. It seems to work well, with becoming unwieldy.
We structure it by having each participant represent a separate functional area, each with somewhat competing agendas. There’s a financial component to the task, but the organizational interests must be considered first and foremost.
Here, we’re looking to see if they take a leadership role without dominating the conversation, if they can work in a cooperative fashion with others, and if they can formulate and propose viable consensus solutions that benefit the organization. You don’t want to see the participants interrupting; at least not too much. You look to see if the participants listen to others’ ideas and even encourage others to provide input.
Participants can demonstrate their active listening skills, negotiating skills, and powers of persuasion.
The manner in which participants process the financial, and incorporate an ROI aspect into their solution, gives some insight into how comfortable they with number crunching. You tend to see some participants doing math on paper, some on their smart phones, and others looking upward while they do it in their heads. I’ve even seem the finger motions.
By videotaping the group negotiating exercise, the participants can watch their performance after the fact. This time around can be even more stressful, as we are sometimes our own harshest critics.
But the process allows the participants to see the interaction from the perspective of the audience. They can hear the conversations, note the conflicts that occur, observe the body language, and see what the evaluators see. It is always very enlightening for participants to watch the replay.
There is also time for the facilitators or evaluators to deliver some additional training to participants on leadership skills and strategic thinking skills. This additional training might also be tailored to be more specific to the organization.
As the participants are going through this experience together, the focus is on peer interaction, and observing how the participants interact with each other, under pressure, knowing that they are being observed and evaluated throughout.
What we find is that lasting relationships are developed among the participants, which continue to flourish long after the program has concluded. They continue to network, share experiences, and share insights about a variety of issues on an ongoing basis.
At the conclusion of the assessment, each participant receives individual feedback. As previously mentioned, the evaluators conduct a panel to reach consensus on the ratings prior to meeting with the participants.
The assessment is usually conducted by a manager within the organization, and based on how that individual would perform at a certain level if promoted today.
The comments are only positive in nature and based on what the evaluator has actually observed and can document. The feedback is presented orally, but based on a written summary, which is also provided to the participant.
But the process doesn’t stop here.
Now that the participants have an idea of what their strengths are, and their areas which may need further development, the next step is to provide additional developmental opportunities for the employee.
So let’s think about what types of activities can expand their knowledge base, strategic perspective, and leadership experience. This can be done in a variety of ways.
First there are the formal developmental activities. Most will required organizational investment of time and money in the form of tuition. These include paid professional training, traditional college courses, or executive education.
I’ve listed a few of the more prominent local universities. I included the Harvard Kennedy School because I was fortunate enough to attend executive education there. The school has programs targeted to federal executive development.
Of course, it’s always good to encourage potential leaders to pursue academic degrees (whatever the next level may be) and/or professional certifications for both personal and professional development.
But there are also some free or low-cost options for college-level developmental activities. If you’ve heard the acronym, “MOOCs”, it refers to Massive Open Online Courses. Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes, and projects. The two leading MOOCs are Coursera and EdX. They offer a variety of subjects in areas such as business, computer science, education, physical science and engineering, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
Many of these courses are free. You can generally access video lectures and certain assignments for free in all courses. For some courses, you may have to pay a nominal registration ($25-$95) fee to receive a certificate of completion. Please note that participants do not earn college credit for these courses.
I’ve had some of my subordinates enroll in these courses, and the feedback regarding the quality of the training was very positive. The topics my folks completed included finance, business writing, emotional intelligence, project management, and statistics. I allowed them to attend the course and complete the work on the clock. For most of the courses, I had multiple employees participate so it became kind of a group learning experience.
Although much of the attention given to MOOCs focuses on their ability to reach millions of learners worldwide, one of Duke University's original primary objectives for getting involved with MOOCs was to use the courses to promote innovation in teaching and learning within the Duke campus community.
At the beginning of Duke's MOOC venture in 2012, Duke President Richard Brodhead said, "We see the online environment as a sphere for experimentation where faculty can develop and pilot new teaching methodologies. If the pedagogical innovations prove successful, faculty members can devise ways to import these ideas back into their Duke classrooms."
In the three years since the venture launched in 2012, MOOCs have led to surprising pedagogical outcomes. Duke faculty members have invested heavily in the university's exploration of MOOCs, with 30 instructors from 28 departments developing 31 MOOCs on Coursera (figure 1). Across 66 individual course sessions, Duke MOOCs have had 2.8 million enrollments and issued more than 72,000 certificates.
Today, faculty members continue to design new MOOCs, launch additional course sessions, and seek out new uses for MOOC educational resources.
Many of the HIPOs are more than willing to pursue these activities in addition to their regular duties. So consider collateral assignments and getting them involved in cross-functional work groups and/or special projects.
Reading can broaden the employee’s perspective; books trade journals, business periodicals, etc. Or watching videos such as TED talks.
One developmental activity I think is really helpful, but sometimes overlooked, is allowing a subordinate to develop a PowerPoint presentation for a manager to present. I’m referring to developing it start to finish, beginning with an outline, and including full speaker notes. It’s great practice for the subordinate and, if done well, can make a good impression on the manager. It can also help to develop a good relationship, which leads to my next point.
At this stage, mentoring can be invaluable. And its usually advisable to have a formal or informal mentor at a senior level. Discussing an issue with someone who is addressing it from the top will help the employee to develop a “big-picture” perspective and strategic thinking skills.
The use of leadership assessment centers can benefit organizations by developing internal talent and by contributing to increased employee morale when recognized as an investment in the work force.
So lastly, let’s take a look at what some of the top global firms are doing to improve the outcomes from succession management. Consider whether your organizations might benefit from some of these approaches.
Assess leadership needs based on what we will need to achieve future strategic goals, not just potential vacancies in current roles.
Identify high potential successors across the organization through greater transparency. Create visibility across the organization and with employees.
Prepare leaders to perform well in a variety of job scenarios, instead of creating singular vertical career paths. Expect high potential employees to be prepared to take on more than a single position on a senior leadership team.
Continue succession management beyond leader selection by reevaluating senior leaders' abilities against changing strategic goals.
Hopefully this presentation gave you some long-term things to think about with regard to succession planning and leadership development in your organization.
I’ll make a copy of the PowerPoint available on the conference Website. If we have a few minutes, I’ll take questions now. Otherwise, feel free to contact me by email.
Thank you!