Prioritize

If you want succession planning to work in your organization, it needs to be the priority. The CEO and C-Suite must take this on as their responsibility to ensure building an effective succession plan strategy is both focused on and executed.

Right from the start, Prasad’s CHRO knew that if their new plan was going to work, it needed to be a major focus of the Executive Team and Prasad. She felt that she and her team could support it and implement it. But to ensure it got the time, energy, and resources it needed, the CEO needed to embrace it.

That was easier said than done, as understandably, the leadership team was dealing with customer retention, supply chain issues, and the constant challenges of trying to manage growth.

But the HR team put together a compelling case, a clear strategy of what they needed the Executive Team to do, and a measure of accountability to ensure it was getting done.

The result? Every Executive Team meeting, every town hall, and every organizational goal had a focus on strengthening their succession planning strategy.

Defining the Ideal

Developing future leaders is serious business, and you need to select the right leaders. Defining what makes a leader successful in your organization is key to ensuring you both communicate the right message and select the right future leaders.

One of the biggest changes the CHRO noticed was that the leaders who had grown the organization to this point, would not necessarily be the right leaders to grow the organization in a hybrid world.

Before they could start recruiting for new talent or developing next level leaders, they needed to back-up and define who they were looking for. They needed to ask themselves, what skills, talents, and qualities they needed to lead this organization going forward.

The CHRO worked with the head of recruiting, their chief diversity officer, and others on the human resources team to collect information and input from team members and leaders about what makes a leader successful at their organization.

Much like the sales team develops their ideal customer, the human resources team wanted to develop their ideal leader, and describe them in great detail. Feeling that the better they understood who they were looking for, the better they could select and train candidates successfully.

The result? They engaged current leaders, team members and even customers to provide feedback on the ideal leader for their company.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Ensure that everyone both understands the organization’s focus on succession planning, how they can participate, and who the organization is looking for in terms of future talent. Every team member should have your criteria for advancement, and feel empowered by the opportunity.

With the ideal candidate clearly defined, and the Executive Team focused on communicating and sharing the message, the human resources team felt they were well on their way to ensuring succession planning. Leadership development was front and center on everyone’s mind.

But, as usual, after a few short months, the communication and focus started to drop off, and other priorities were taking place. The CHRO and her team jumped back into action.

They developed a strategy to ensure that succession planning made its way into every important initiative the company had. They made it a significant part of the onboarding program. They worked with corporate communications to work a succession planning quote into every speech or message the CEO relayed to the team.

They worked with marketing and branding to create a special logo and tagline that could be added to emails and documents. They even incorporated the logo into their Zoom and Teams conferencing.

The result? Every communication the team engaged in, the focus on succession planning strategy was reinforced. 

Engage Your Team

Particularly in a hybrid working environment, ensure that your succession planning strategy is not driven top down. As you look for candidates, identify qualities needed in leaders, create ways for employees to learn new skills, and gain experience by continuously asking the team for their ideas and input.
The CHRO knew that if this plan was going to work, they would need to engage the team, and get them active in the process.

She created a succession planning task force made up of members of the team from all levels of the organization. They met virtually on a quarterly basis to discuss the progress of the program, suggest changes, and provide valuable feedback to the leadership team.

This ensured that every communication the Executive Team or the human resources team shared they could present it as an idea with buy-in from every level of the organization.

The result? The succession plan was far more effective, and was widely recognized as team strategy rather than a leadership strategy. 

Create the Opportunities

Succession planning strategy in a hybrid world is different as many of the team members you are developing are working offsite and often by themselves. If you want your succession planning strategy to work, you need to create the projects, experiences, and opportunities to engage with your team, allow them to work with other team members, and learn from other leaders.

The hybrid world created one of the biggest challenges to developing talent. Without people in the office interacting with leaders, they weren’t exposed to the same opportunities or experiences. The human resources team realized they were going to need to get creative. 

Working with the succession planning task force and executive leadership, they identified projects that needed to be implemented, and created small teams of ideal candidates and leaders to work on those projects virtually and in person. The projects were designed to challenge leadership candidates, develop their skills, and see who was right for the next leadership position.

In addition, the succession planning task force provided ideas and input on new training initiatives and skill building activities for developing leaders in a hybrid world.

The result? A new and much improved holistic approach to training next level leaders.

New Ways To Find Talent

One of the biggest shifts in succession planning is how to find the talent you need in a virtual working world.

The recruiting team immediately identified the challenge of finding talent in today’s hybrid world. And the human resources director knew that their old ways of identifying leadership candidates would no longer work and would require an update.

They went back to the task force and asked for their ideas and input. First, they suggested getting the entire team involved. The best way to find good candidates was to turn to the team and ask everyone to get engaged. By reminding everyone of the criteria for advancement, they asked the team both for referrals and to keep an eye out continuously for the candidates they needed.

They also expanded their search beyond the geographic limitations they had after realizing that in a hybrid world, where candidates lived was far less important than the desire to be a part of the team.

Lastly, they turned recruiting into a proactive role more like sales. They did this by consistently contacting the candidates they wanted and creating nurturing and email sequences to recruit them. They used sites like LINKEDIN and Zip Recruiter to actively pursue the candidates they wanted.

The result? They created a pipeline of strong candidates both internal and external to the organization. They put them in a position of strength when it came to succession planning strategy. 

Review, Adjust, Take Action

Any succession plan, no matter how well structured or executed, always has room for improvement. This is a marketplace that is constantly shifting and your succession plan strategy needs to shift with it. Take the time to review, adjust your plan and take the actions you need to make it more effective.

Today this company, unlike their competitors, is not only fully staffed, but has a clear succession plan for every critical position on their team. Every team member has a career path and is working on their needed leadership skills.

Despite the challenges of working in a virtual world, and developing talent in a hybrid environment, the CHRO feels like the challenges have made their succession plan strategy better than ever. They are more committed and more engaged, and not resting on their accomplishments.

Their task force is still in place, rotating new members every year, and updating their succession plan to ensure it remains relevant and fills the needs of this changing marketplace.