This month, FastCompany is printing the feedback to its cover story last month entitiled
"Why We Love to Hate HR."  Apparently there was a huge volume of responses (43% for and 57% against the article).

 My favorites:

For
The fundamental problem with HR is that the service work such as payroll, benefits and compliance is commingled with the strategic work such as job definition, cadidate assessment, employee-performance management, and succession planning. When service and strategy aren’t separated, the immediate service needs take precedence over the more important but less tangible strategic work. And the death spiral begins… In short, HR needs to free iteself from the slavery of service to provide the leadership of strategy. – Thomas Hattersley

 Against
I am currently an HR director and am disgusted with your cover and negative, stereotyped, and immature comments regarding the profession. In my career, I’ve been a finance director, plant manager, safety director, and operations manager. All of those positions were easier than being an HR director. I am not a "dull tack in the drawer." I have three college degrees, including an MBA and an additional master’s degree. — Deborah Roberts

Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail had an article a couple of days ago on succession planning for the CEO role. Most Boards, the article says, are simply unprepared to replace the top executive if a sudden change is necessary. Choosing a successor is a critical decison, both becuase it determines the leadership for the company’s next phase, but also because those passed over may choose to leave for other opportunities or, worse, become demotivated in their current role.

A quote: "Rob Grandy, Korn/Ferry’s Canadian board practice leader, said directors may be neglecting this issue just because they have so many other pressing matters fighting for their time." Time is an important issue at every company, and at every level. Board memebers and managers, especially at larger companies, will simply never be able to keep track of every potential candidate for every potential position. The question alone is mind boggling.

So what then to do?

Imagine a succession planning system where every potential candidate for every role (present AND future) is identifiable with a button-click. Imagine a system where skills, strenghts and past reviews are immediately accessible to help in the decision making process. Imagine a system where succession planning for every position in your company can be thought out in advance, so you’re ready to move when change happens.

Don’t work too hard imagining

It already exists.

A study has just been published by Bersin & Associates (The Convergence of Learning and Performance: Has Talent Management Arrived?) that brings up some interesting points, and a few debates, around this market. According to this report, Talent Management brings together learning management and employee performance management processes. Naturally following is the coming together of the applications associated with these processes. As a consultancy primarily focused on enterprise learning, this study positions learning management as the center—or core—of a Talent Management solution.
(more…)

We’re talking about Succession Planning and so is Gautam Ghosh: The Art of Performance Management

He thinks that “organizational systems capture performance goals that are related to today’s role, and not tomorrow’s,” but he’s wrong. Workforce Performance Management, when done right, can in fact not only identify and promote the skills or, as we call them, competencies that companies need for the future – but can also capture their manager’s perspectives to directly affect the succession process. We’re seeing that done every day with our solution, and if he’s interested, we can show him how, too.

Just finished reviewing the webinar with Liviu Dedes from Pep Boys and Kathy Green from Advo about Succession Planning. It’s really amazing how it can completely transform the flexibility and adaptability of an organization.

Both Pep Boys and Advo shared their experiences from start to finish on implementing Succession Planning and making it work in their organizations. I’m not going to summarize the whole thing, but I encourage everyone to watch (it’s reasonably short and to the point – and the Interwise system lets you skip to specific slides with their accompanying audio – COOL!). Or, you can just download the slides for a quick perusal.

Some things I learned:
– Most companies already have the data they need to start planning for succession
– 75% of the 320 attendees said they would NOT be able to grow their leadership team by 50% in 45 days (could you?) They actually had to do this at Pep Boys.
– Succession Planning brings HR to the strategy table – when an executive leaves, HR can be there with hard data showing who’s ready now, and who’s the best fit to assume the role

Here are the Slides. Here is the Webinar.

One of the questions we hear most often when talking about succession planning has to do with bench strength. Bench strength is another one of those sports analogies we’ve all come to love that speaks to the depth of our organizations. Who do we have waiting in the wings to step into a new position when needed?

The issue gets a lot of press whenever a high level executive at a major company prepares to step down (as with Jack Welch at GE) or dies (with the unfortunate passing of Jim Cantalupo of McDonalds). In McDonald’s case, the company had no significant succession plan and struggled both in terms of strategic direction and stock price. In Mr. Welch’s case, the succession planning process had begun years in advance because both the position and the person were so obviously important as to merit some serious thinking about who would step in. But what about lower down in the organization at the VP level, the director level, even the manager level?

The truth is that, in the new information worker driven economy, every level is important. During the industrial age, when most workers were performing tasks now done by machine, succession planning for the organization was basically irrelevant. But now think about Google. Google exists because a couple of guys had a good idea and the will to make it work. The company thrives because it hires the smartest people it can find and sets them free to do their best. No machine can do what any Google employee does, and most likely, none can do what you do either. The skill set is paramount.

So back to bench strength. Today’s workers are basically free agents (more sports analogies, sorry). As we all know, the days of working for one employer for an entire career are long gone. The norm is now for employees to move freely about the business world wherever they can find the best deal for themselves. How can a company make them feel important, show them movement, win the war for talent? Thinking pragmatically about bench strength is part of the answer.

So where can you start?

Understanding and evaluating your bench strength is predicated on visibility into your workforce:

· Who do you have available?
· What are their strengths and weaknesses?
· What is their skill set?
· What motivates them?

These data points can come from a variety of places. They can come from other systems or processes such as performance assessment, competency assessment, performance reviews or even Myers-Briggs. The point is that you can’t begin to think about bench strength or succession planning until you’ve got a good picture of your workforce.

Once the visibility is in place, you can begin to analyze the data from the perspective of bench strength. You can seek out the talent gaps in your organizations to find out what skills are lacking. You can examine which roles have many potential backups, and which have none. You can explore the far reaches of your company to find talent in places you’d have hardly looked before.

The challenge is figuring out where to start and what tools you’ll use to get there. And the answer is unique to your organization.

What strategies and tactics have you used to understand bench strength or implement succession planning? Share your experiences and your wisdom.