Succession planning is known to be important. It is a process intended to help organizations have highly effective leaders in the right places. Yet, it is misunderstood and often mis-applied (more on that in a second). In part because of those missteps, I propose it is time to consider another mental framework. One to create a multitude of highly effective leaders in our organizations. Enter the idea of building a leadership pipeline.
Succession Planning
If you do a web search for succession planning, you will quickly see the misconceptions. Here are a couple of definitions that represent many more:
Succession planning is the process of identifying the critical positions within your organization and developing action plans for individuals to assume those positions. (source)
The term succession planning refers to a business strategy companies use to pass leadership roles down to another employee or group of employees. (source)
Notice the difference between those and the description from SHRM (the Society for Human Resource Management:
Succession planning is a focused process for keeping talent in the pipeline. It is generally a 12- to 36-month process of preparation, not pre-selection.
Do you see the difference? The big difference is that SHRM suggests (I believe rightly) that the focus is on preparation, not pre-selection.
Too often, succession planning becomes a process similar to pre-filling boxes. We presume an outcome using pre-selections. Unfortunately, that pre-selection often devolves into a granular, tactical process. Anytime the world changes, people leave, or other unforeseen circumstances happen, the boxes must be re-filled far in advance.
Building a Leadership Pipeline
The approach of building a leadership pipeline asks a different question:
What can we do to support and grow the leaders across our organization?
That question goes beyond filling the future boxes and encourages building more leadership skills in more people. Ultimately, this is a broader, more strategic approach with far greater impact. It is a general approach to developing leaders rather than pre-ordaining a few for a future that is unclear anyway.
This core idea here isn’t planning for specific roles. Instead, it builds the leadership capacity across the organization so multiple great candidates (including those you might never consider originally) emerge. And while that is happening, the entire organization benefits from more effective leadership.
Which Then?
My point is not to throw succession planning away, but rather help us think about it differently and more broadly. Those processes will be easier and far more effective when coupled with building your leadership pipeline.
A framework focused on building leaders across the organization allows you to fill roles at the top when needed. But it does something more. It builds a deeper bench, filled with more effective and successful leaders at all levels. That type of outcome puts you in a much better position.
Rather than asking “Who can we find?” ask a more powerful question: “Which of these great candidates is the best fit today?”
If you would like to explore these differences further, and have help building your leadership pipeline, reach out to us (email or call 316-387-1424). We would be happy help you understand your situation and next steps.
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