Succession management is the planning, execution and ongoing management of a company’s critical future talent needs. The focus is on developing today’s talent into tomorrow’s leaders. Here are five important steps to consider when building a successful succession management strategyStep One: Assess your business strategy and define your leadership objectives
Step One: The process must begin with an assessment of your organisation’s current and future business strategy. Understanding your competitive position in the marketplace, along with your growth goals, allows for better clarification of future leadership needs.
Step Two: Develop the model for an integrated talent management system
You cannot begin to prepare your future executives if you do not know what they will be called upon to do – and what competencies they will need to succeed. In Step Two, you need to define future leadership needs and competencies required for success. Once you know what is needed, you can then establish internal talent identification and evaluation criteria.
In addition, you might also need to uncover executive ‘derailers’ that can cause executives at any level to fail. These can include such behavioural traits as the inability to motivate others or build a team, indecisiveness or the tendency to take criticism too personally. Knowing what works, along with what doesn’t, makes for a comprehensive leadership model.
Step Three: Assess and align the talent in your organisation with your business strategy
In Step Three, you begin to assess and identify people with the most leadership potential. To be certain the process is objective, and to avoid overlooking those not currently in management roles, validated psychometric assessments should be used along with current performance data.
Casting a wide net ensures that you do not miss promising people at any level of your organisation. Current employees will be rated against the established leadership competencies, and individual gap analyses will be used to determine their developmental needs.
Step Four: Provide leadership feedback and development planning
Filling key positions from within your organisation is much more accurate and efficient than bringing in an executive from the outside. It also has the added advantages of providing opportunities for employee growth and retention, as people will feel more valued and confident about their future with your company.
Therefore, it is vital that your high-potential leaders have a clear understanding of your organisation’s leadership competencies, as well as their own developmental needs. This is achieved through individual feedback and coaching, and providing each individual with a development plan to help them reach your shared goals.
Step Five: Implement, monitor, measure and report developmental strategies
Leadership development needs to be a continuous process, not a series of one-time events. People can make behavioural adjustments and develop new skills if they are motivated and provided with the required resources and support.
Developmental learning has a greater and more lasting impact than conventional training, since individuals in your talent pool are expected to grow and see their growth measured over time. During this phase, specific strategies to address your particular business needs can be implemented – including, but not limited to action learning, executive coaching and team-based projects.
+ Article contributed by Alan Tea, Managing Consultant of Caliper Human Strategies, Singapore
+ Caliper is a global talent management consulting firm that has since 1961, through the use of the Caliper Profile, assessed and developed more than 2.5 million individuals across 29,000 companies
+ www.caliper.com.sg
+ info@caliper.com.sg