The selection and cultivation of future leaders are essential to an organization’s long-term health. You can not run an organization without skilled people equipped to lead the positions when the current occupants leave. Succession planning is the identification and development of future leaders at the organization, not only at the top but for significant positions at all levels. It helps in preparing the business for all possibilities by developing high-potential workers for progression.
Certain organizations succeed in cultivating deep and abiding bench strength by addressing succession planning more than just the mechanical method of updating a list. These organizations have merged two practices, leadership development, and succession planning, to design an abiding process for managing the skill roster in the organizations. In many organizations, these two practices remain in different functional storehouses, but they are connected because they share a necessary and significant aim of getting the right talents in the right spot.
In this article, we will describe the essential rules for establishing a succession management system that will create a steady and stable pipeline of leadership skills.
Focus on Development
The basic rule of succession management is that it needs to be a flexible system determined toward developmental exercises and not a firm list of high-potential workers and the apertures they might fill. By uniting leadership development and succession planning, you make the best of both, recognition of the talents needed for senior management positions with an enlightening system that can assist managers to strengthen those skills.
Identify Linchpin Positions
Succession planning usually focuses on some positions at the top, whereas leadership development normally starts in middle management. Merging the two functions within a single system enables organizations to adopt a long-term outlook of the process of developing middle managers, to become general managers.
Succession management practices should concentrate on linchpin positions, which are essential to the long-term well-being of the organization. They are tough to fill and they normally reside in secured sections of the business.
Make It Transparent
Succession planning practices have traditionally remained shrouded in secrecy to avoid weakening the motivation of employees who do not stand on the fast track. A succession management practice is not merely about being fair. Workers are usually a more reliable source of information regarding themselves and their talents and abilities. And if the workers understand what they require to do to attain a particular level on the ladder, they can practice steps to achieve that.
Measure Progress Regularly
When succession planning and leadership development are blended and moving apart from the replacement behaviorism of the past, mapping success becomes a long-term thing. The ultimate purpose is to secure a firm slate of candidates for the top position. The succession system also helps the organization to recognize gaps more broadly.
Keep It Flexible
The old modeled succession planning was rigid, as employees do not move on and off fluidly. Succession management practices are efficient only if they acknowledge users’ requirements and the tools and methods are accessible to practice and provide reliable information.
Good succession management is achievable in an organizational culture that promotes openness and risk-taking at the administrative level. It depends on the readiness to distinguish individual achievement and corporate practice in which accuracy is appreciated more than refinement.
