Succession management: good to talk about, hard to practice

In any leadership seminar and workshop it is not uncommon to hear leaders of corporate world talking about succession planning with all seriousness. They also rattle out a laundry list of consequences of bad succession planning and how it can jeopardise long term goals of an organisation.

However, in practice, research after research are bringing to light the precious little that is being done to address organisational challenges around a steady pipeline of successors for each role, should the role holder move out. Though succession management is good for every role and every level, the consequences of not implementing the same for critical roles and at senior management levels are dark and scary.

A research organisation threw up evidence around some of these issues in a survey conducted in 2009. From 1,493 organisations who responded to the survey, conducted globally in Latin America, North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand and Asia, it was found that less than half the organisations had a defined succession plan.

Globally it was seen that succession management was more common at the department head level and above, than at lower levels. The irony is, as stated at the very outset of this piece, that the low attention to succession management is despite the fact that 55 per cent of these leaders admitted that they were aware that their firm’s performance was likely or very likely to suffer in the near future from insufficient leadership talent. The good news however is, when Indian responses were benchmarked to global responses, it was found that organisations in India were more likely to have succession plans for senior level managers compared to the average organisation worldwide.

These findings lead us to two important questions for every leader to think through and find organisation specific answers thereof. The first question is why this great gap between realisation and action? Common sense would tell if leaders are aware of the negative consequences of a lack of succession management, then they would do all that is required to make it happen. This question would have no one single answer. However, in my discussions with friends some of whom are at the helm of affairs of functions such as Human Resources, Operations, Sales and Marketing, I get to hear a somewhat common refrain – “addressing day-to-day issues is so much time consuming that finding time for long term strategic issues like succession planning is just not possible”. I often question them what could be the reason for day-to-day issues taking up most of their time? Pat comes the answer – “you know we find that lot of time is eaten up in monitoring the actions taken by people down the line so that immediate organisational goals are achieved within tight timelines”. When pointed out that this is the classic egg and chicken situation – which comes first, the egg or the chicken – confused reactions emanate. Many are not sure if devoting time to succession planning will ensure less of top management time on monitoring routine day-to-day activities. Another reaction I come across is that senior level managers by involving themselves in day to day monitoring activities are ensuring that people down below get the lessons right and develop themselves to fill in the next role. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Monitoring is close to policing while coaching is a sure path to learning. Leaders need to realise that succession management is a systematic process for identifying and developing candidates to fill leadership or management positions. It is akin to the effort that goes into preparing an athlete for participating in Olympics Games that is held once in four years. Planned practices under qualified coach, routine health check-ups, tracking diet, and many other planned activities go into preparing athletes. Nothing is left to chance and speculation. Similarly, for succession management to happen, leaders must take out time to craft long term planned activities from potential identification to potential development and result experimentation with experts in the field, which includes Talent Management consulting firms.

The second question is about the rationale behind investing more time and effort on the senior cadres in an organisation than on the entire leadership pipeline. It is well known to all that the best method to ensure a qualified cadre of leaders in the pipeline is to begin at the bottom. People from the bottom of the organisational pyramid must be made aware through action that the best potential will have the biggest chance for organisational support to develop and rise up the ladder into the next rung of leadership. If this message is not loud and clear through concerted effort on succession planning for all levels in the organisation then the best talent will seek out such opportunities in other organisations and move out leaving behind an organisation that would be constantly struggling to catch up with its talent gap. By focusing on the consequences of attrition at only critical and senior level positions organisations are unable to tap the vast mass of talent who today are at the bottom of the pyramid yet have the promise to fill up critical and top level positions in the years to come. No wonder the brightest of this pool move away to competitors with all tacit knowledge they possess. Besides, leaders do not realise that leadership skill deficit at any level in an organisation is like the termite which eats into the roots of structures. Though it is acknowledged that the visibility of a succession deficit is more pronounced at the top level, yet it is foolish to ignore succession deficits at other organisational levels. A sudden gap, irrespective of the level, creates an equally sudden vacuum that eats into available organisational resources for filling up.

Hence, practicing organisation wide succession management programs with requisite rigour and ardour is an imperative for organisational success and well being. It is a job of everyone and the not the Human Resource function alone. Smart organisations include succession management as part of the Key Result Area for people managers across levels. It includes, among other skills to identify high potential, engage in meaningful performance discussions, coach identified candidates to ever increasing levels of efficiency and effectiveness, put in place creatively crafted developmental plans and make fair and evidence based hiring and promotion decisions.