The AGILedge / CGL Criteria for Effective
Talent Readiness / Succession Planning Processes
Succession planning for senior management and key people in an organization is a critical process that not only ensures the continuity of leadership within an organization but also enables the organization to be strategic and more effective in their talent acquisition and talent development strategies. Based on our experience, research, and best practices we've seen, the following are critical success factors for effective succession planning:
Whether you use us to help facilitate the process or not, we wish you the best in achieving talent readiness and realizing the potential of your organization.
1. Succession planning must be aligned with the organization's vision, purpose, strategic goals, and objectives. All involved in the process must be clear on these, or the process should be delayed until that is accomplished.
2. There must be full commitment from the organization's key leader, executive team, and ownership, and involvement!
3. You need to understand the composition of the jobs now and in the future (the best you can, given the environment of rapid change we are in). You need to look at likely technological (and other environments as well: demographic, economic, regulatory) changes such as AI, automation, and other "ways of doing things differently and better" and consider how it will affect the management of your business.
4. Many organizations "invest" a large sum of money in competency models and software as the initial part of a succession planning effort. They get a bunch of attributes that make up competencies, but using these productively is almost never done—it's a checklist item with little value. We instead focus on role-related profiles based both on our job research and your role requirements. We do recommend a couple of hours of discussion on your leadership competencies and desired cultural attributes. The outcome of this is enhanced understanding so we can create role analysis profiles and better understand cultural goals. Also, depending on your challenges and metrics on retention, engagement, and other variables, a more detailed dive into culture may be necessary.
5. There is no getting around relating performance to potential and to aspirations. One of the biggest challenges to talent readiness is reliance on inaccurate, biased, and just plain wrong performance appraisal processes. When you are doing succession planning, you first need to be brutally honest about the quality of your process, and if it's poor, you need to rely on other data. You also need to take action in the short term to improve the quality of it by addressing low-hanging fruit.
6. There have been some great advances in the quality and predictive accuracy of behavioral assessments in the last decade. Using this data, historical data from your systems, and 360 feedback enables far more effective decision-making.
7. Transparency and open communication about the process and its goals are required.
8. Should you not have a sufficiently diverse executive team, this is where you need to have goals and plans to address diversity.
9. By its nature, the succession planning process optimally involves processes using both objective and subjective data. There is also a need for buy-in among the leadership team, which can only be achieved through collaboration. In this decision-making process, the objective data serves as a "backstop" for substantiating differences with subjective opinions. In addition, there are over 12 types of biases and compliance triggers that impact people's judgments in these processes. We require that these biases are understood and that reminders of them are interspersed throughout the process.
10. This talent readiness process must be well-structured and systematic, which includes having milestones and follow-up as well as metrics to monitor.
11. A key outcome of succession planning should be personalized individual development plans for potential successors based on the data and their aspirations. This should be accompanied by an investment as required in leadership development, coaching, and mentoring.
12. A second key outcome should be a strategic talent acquisition plan.
13. A third key outcome is risk management, which means having contingency plans for sudden or unexpected departures and using scenario planning to anticipate and prepare for various future leadership needs.