EXPERT'S CORNER - Top 12 reasons for implementing succession planning

by Mark Caruso

How to retain and grow your company's leadership is often the most neglected item on a company's agenda. And yet, it may be the most important. In a typical week or month, how much time does your company devote to revenue forecasts, budget projections and other financial matters? If you're like most companies, financial discussions take up a disproportionate amount of your time, leaving very little discussion about people -- the very people who are responsible for creating your company's revenue and profits.

Is your company prepared to successfully fill vacancies in key leadership positions? Do your senior executives have the complete range of skills needed to advance in the organization? Does your organization have a sufficient, qualified leadership bench, ready to shape and execute your business strategies both today and into the future? Leading global companies recognize that just as they carefully evaluate their financial projections, they must also carefully plan for the eventual replacement of managers at all levels in their organizations. They understand that people drive profits - not the other way around. But for many companies, succession planning is a loosely defined concept and a poorly implemented process. Most organizations have no method of collecting, summarizing and analyzing contextual information about their key people.

In order to develop and grow your company's key leadership, you must have a sustainable agenda to ensure that hiring and training fit an overall master plan; a plan that can also help employees gain experience in diverse areas so that they're ready for an assignment when an opening occurs.

TOP 12 REASONS
12. Meet the requirement of the Board of Directors and other stakeholders that a leadership succession planning process is in place.
11. Understand the hidden talents of your leadership team to optimize their utility in day-to-day projects and initiatives. This raises productivity for the entire organization.
10. Optimal deployment of leadership talent creates a competitive advantage.
9. Use this knowledge base to flex the existing organization structure to the changing demands of the marketplace.
8. Extend the process quickly to collect data for organization design initiatives to assimilate new leaders post acquisitions and mergers.
7. Robust "people data" is very useful for downsizing situations - so the right people remain in order to successfully rebuild.
6. Have strategic staffing needs drive the expenditures for executive education, thereby ensuring a suitable return on investment.
5. Having the strategic staffing needs of the organization drive people development efforts ensures these efforts are truly meaningful in the eyes of leaders involved in the learning, thereby making executive education and development actually contribute to retention.
4. Provide a framework to improve organizational culture by regularly and candidly discussing the strength of the current leadership team and the leadership bench.
3. Determine which specific key leaders are at high risk of leaving and create strategies to retain undesired losses.
2. Predict which key leadership jobs will become open in the next 12 months. Prepare replacements with a sense of urgency or network for external replacements, thereby saving search fees. In either event, reduce problems associated with abrupt changes in key leaders.
1. Exert appropriate management control and proactively manage the process of having the right leaders in the right place at the right time.

About Mark Caruso
Mark Caruso is recognized globally as an expert in a number of strategic HR processes, including succession planning, performance management, compensation and executive development.

In addition to founding Success Associates in 1996, Caruso served as Executive Vice President at TMP Worldwide (NASDAQ: MNST). During his tenure, Caruso helped create the company's Executive Resourcing Division, expanding its portfolio of products and services and growing revenues to more than $14 million in less than two years. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President, Human Resources at Choice Hotels International (NYSE: CHH) and held a variety of senior management positions, including Vice President of Worldwide HR Development for Holiday Inn Worldwide, acting VP of Information Technology at Sprint PCS and various HR and IT management positions during his eight years at Federal Express.

His models for succession planning have been benchmarked as best practice by HR Effectiveness, Inc. He has designed and implemented succession planning and performance management processes and software for many of world's most successful companies

Caruso has a BS degree in Psychology and Sociology and an MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin.

Please visit www.successassociates.com.
Mark Caruso can be phoned in the USA at +1 (301) 391-6161.