Succession Planning
An Effective Business
Strategy

Succession planning is an ongoing, dynamic process that helps organizations to align their business goals and their human capital needs. It also ensures that an enterprise can keep pace with changes to the business industry, and overall marketplace.

To achieve outstanding results using succession planning, an organization must develop an effective and highly focused strategy that centers on organizational excellence.

In most cases, succession planning focuses on three main areas. First, it addresses the needs of the organization as senior management ages. It is not unusual for a management team - particularly a CEO - to spend years leading an organization. During that time, business practices and procedures become increasingly entrenched and daily issues take precedence.

Too often, the enterprise neglects succession planning and does not have people available who are fully prepared to assume the top posts. Although large organizations are at risk, the problem can prove especially severe at small companies, which often flounder, and sometimes collapse, after the founder or CEO leaves.

At many businesses, having little or no succession planning wreaks havoc when the organization's leader retires. Nobody is fully prepared to assume the top post.

Second, succession planning helps an organization to prepare for an unexpected event. It is often difficult to plan for the unimaginable. Yet, the sudden illness or death of a key executive can reverberate throughout an organization, paralyzing both management and staff and impeding the organization's ability to execute its business plan.

Unfortunately, diseases, automobile accidents, plane crashes, and other disasters are an ongoing reality. Although it is not feasible to plan for every possible scenario, and particularly for the loss of several key leaders at the same time, it is entirely realistic to map out a chain of command and understand who will assume control if and when a key executive is lost.

Finally, succession planning ensures that an organization has the right personnel to function at peak efficiency. Today, many organizations strive to identify key objectives and business goals and shape a work-force accordingly. Although executives and senior managers play a crucial role in defining such organizations, there is a need for specific skills and competencies throughout the enterprise.

Not only does succession planning serve as a way to create an organizational hierarchy, but it can also help organizations conduct an inventory of human capital and better understand gaps. It can also help organizations manage change in a more holistic way.

The way in which succession planning functions is to:

• Provide a co-ordinated strategy for the identification and development of the organization's key resource
  
  
• Retain the services of upwardly mobile employees within the company and make the company more attractive to prospective employees who see opportunities for growth.
  
  
• Ensure that there is always a readily available and inexpensive source of in-house replacements for key leadership positions
  
  
• Promote challenging and rewarding career possibilities through meaningful professional development for potential administrators
  
  
• Reduce lost productivity while a replacement from the outside needs a time-consuming learning curve
  
  
• Help to affirm commitment to diversity goals in hiring and promoting
• Enhances a positive work culture through ongoing support for employees.

A key advantage of succession planning is the strong message it sends that officials value the contributions of its employees and will encourage their career growth. Employees may be more willing to take on additional responsibilities and accept challenging professional assignments if they know their efforts will result in recognition and promotion.

Conversely, the same employees may view management's reluctance to promote those already working in the schools as failure to reward top performers. Therefore succession planning can only be beneficial to any of today's businesses.