The idea of having a leadership position suddenly become vacant can have disastrous impacts on groups, companies, and countries. A mainstream depiction of this can be seen in the widely popular American fantasy drama, Game of Thrones; every time a kingdom is de-kinged suddenly, a free for all war occurs from both internal and external forces wanting to grab the throne. Which is why many monarchs today take great importance is planning a rightful heir. Whilst not as dramatic as on TV, when organizations large or small fail proper succession planning the impact is just as harmful.
Succession planning has proven through time to be a practice that can make or break an organizations future and has also shown to be able to impact shareholder value overnight.
In today’s light, succession planning is not only a must have for organizations but must also evolve and be agile to adapt to demanding and constantly changing business environments.
We need to relook into our succession planning practices, repurpose why we do it and redefine what it means as a whole. We need to put a new lens to succession planning.
Traditional Succession Planning
62% of employees
claim that they would be “significantly more engaged” at work if their company has succession planning
3 Things To Do Away With – Traditional Succession Planning
Whilst succession planning still remains vital in organizations today, it is important for organizations to adopt new and improved processes to better their succession planning. Traditional succession planning ways have downsides that severely impact leadership pipelines and development, eventually having a big impact on organizational success.
There are 3 key practices that companies need to revamp or do away with in order to groom the right person into the right roles.
- Subjectivity in decision making
- Promotion only on performance
- Succession planning only when required
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1. Subjectivity In Decision Making
Organizations are sometimes faced with the need to make decisions with a lack of information or
data. When faced with this situation in making people decisions, subjectivity starts to creep in whether we realize it or not. Suggestions on who should succeed into a certain role and why they are good starts being formed by opinions instead of facts. Subjectivity can come in 2 forms:
Explicit — Knowingly being partial to a person and favoring them by choice
Implicit — Unknowingly being partial to a person driven by our mind’s preferences
Whilst conversations and opinions are always needed in succession planning, they should be driven by objective information such as data.
2. Promotion Only On Performance
Performance of an employee has historically been the single factor leading them to be considered a successor to a new role. Case studies and research now show us that whilst performance is an important metric, it should not be the only factor used in promotion. An employee performing well in their current role, may not necessarily be an indication they will do the same in the next role.
A succession planning case in Mattel Inc, the multinational manufacturing company shows us this. Jill Barad, who served as CEO from 1997–2000 was catapulted into the role due to her amazing track record in Marketing. However, her performance in Marketing did not give her insights into the financial and strategic factors in running a multinational company and resigned after a turbulent 3 years for the company. Many factors aside from performance should have been considered before Mattel succession planned.
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