Succession Planning

Succession Planning

Succession planning is the strategic process in which organizations plan for future management requirements by identifying candidates that can best fill these roles. It attempts to develop and promote individuals within the organization through an internal selection process consisting of human resource planning, assessing an organization’s needs, developing managers and identifying future candidates’ career paths.

Human resource planning is the first step in the internal selection process and requires the organization to forecast its future needs at executive level positions. Secondly, the qualifications of these executive roles must be defined; candidates will need to be assessed for these roles based on their abilities and future career paths. The fact that the company already maintains a good deal of data on prospective candidates is a strong benefit to utilizing internal selection.

Managers that have been identified as possible promotion candidates will need to engage in developmental activities focused on improving their skills. Such activities may include job rotation through key executive positions, overseas assignments, additional education and performance related training and development. These activities will act as a road map for developing the future career path that a potential candidate will need to follow to ensure they are prepared to undertake an executive position with an organization.

Succession planning utilizing internal selection methods can have several drawbacks. Employees that have not been targeted for promotion to executive positions may feel they have been overlooked and as a result become discouraged, ultimately leaving the organization for employment elsewhere. Additionally, employees that have been trained and socialized within the organization may lack some of the skills, creativity and initiative that candidates outside the organization possess. Managers may be targeted for promotion even though they lack the skills necessary to succeed in the executive position.

Potential problems in succession planning include the crowned prince syndrome, talent drain and the complexity of dealing with large amounts of human resource information. The crowned prince syndrome occurs when senior management only considers those candidates for advancement that have become known to them instead of carefully assessing the capabilities of others that stronger within the organization. This mistake could result in performance issues with the ear-marked individual and the demotivation of other qualified candidates employed in the company ending.

Talent drain can occur as a result of upper management identifying only a small number of candidates to receive training and development for future executive positions, therefore compelling overlooked individuals to leave the company. This turnover could have a significant effect on