If you are ready to create a succession plan, you may be wondering: What is a succession management strategy? How do you go about drafting it? What are the key elements to include? The answers are here. Continue reading ‘What Is Your Succession Management Strategy?’
Monthly Archive for August, 2010
As a coach, you would think that my primary job is to work with executives to be successful in their current role. Of course, that is a big part of it, but what is interesting is that nine times out of ten, once I have developed trust with a client, they tell me that they want to quit their job. They plan on leaving in the near future, or after extracting every bit of learning they can from their current organization. It’s not because they don’t like the work, or the people they work with, it is usually because they don’t like the intensity of their job, their schedule, and the culture on the executive team.
The culture on the executive team and the intensity that comes with it, also factors into people’s decisions about whether to take a promotion, or not. “Gloria” is the Director, HR for a fast growing start up. She just got a job offer to be the VP. She wants to do the work, but her big hesitation is the shift in expectations. Will she have to sell her soul to do this job? Does taking this job mean that she won’t have time for her workouts? Her hobbies? Will it be harder to maintain her personal boundaries and her flexible schedule? There is something about reporting directly into the CEO that is awesome and irksome. If she takes the job, will she get meshed into his power circle to the point that she loses herself?
Gloria’s fears are not unfounded. This happens a lot. The norms at the executive table are “be on the team 115%,” or not at all. Consider “John,” a high potential leader at Microsoft. His boss told him last week that he is one of the highest potential leaders in the workgroup. The only hitch? He skis too much and cares too much about worklife balance. Huh? John got the picture. If he wants to get promoted, he needs to put his values aside and play the corporate game. He was not impressed and he is already talking to headhunters. Is this the reaction we want from our high potential leaders?
What perplexes me is that this stuff goes on all the time! I scratch my head and ask myself: “Why do organizations think that it is okay to ask their leaders to put their life aside and give everything they got to their job?” Well, I know that this attitude started from the industrial revolution – that period in life where work was positioned as salvation for a “better life” and a management job was seen as the ticket to status, a big screen tv, and a white picket fence. But, why are companies still putting this kind of pressure on their leaders, especially since 99.9% of them know that we are facing one of the biggest leadership crises in history, and we are going to have a massive shortage of leaders in the coming decades?
If companies want a competitive advantage in the future, they must crack this nut. They must find ways to attract high potential leaders, get their creative energy and commitment, and give them the space and flexibility to have a life. It will be very tempting to keep giving them more, more, more due to the shortage of talent and the continued drive for growth, but it will not work. They must come up with more flexible and realistic models.
My next post will talk about how to create a healthy executive team culture.
In the last few weeks I have had three leaders approach me who are tagged as “a high potential leader” in their business, but instead of this being an exciting prospect, it is causing them stress. On the one hand it is flattering that their boss sees their potential, and the company wants to invest in them, but on the other hand, they now feel like they have to “fake it” because, in truth, they want to quit. If you are facing this same dilemma, here is some advice about what to do.
First, you need to find the right balance between being honest and not burning any bridges. Consider “Bob.” Bob was a VP, Marketing for a fast growing start up and he was considered next in line for the CEO position. The CEO loved him. The challenge was that Bob was stressed out by the CEO’s style and rather than play it straight with him, he just brown nosed. Of course, the CEO loved Bob because he said all the right things. He was investing heavily in his development and he was planning on giving him a healthy equity package. On the day Bob quit, he was in a state of shock. It felt like a personal rejection and it made no sense given Bob’s ongoing behaviour which said, “I am in. I am one of the team.” We can learn a lot from Bob about what not to do.
Where Bob went wrong is he kept playing the “I am fully committed and totally enthusiastic about this business game” for too long. Instead of having a straight conversation with the CEO about his personal challenges, he chose to act like everything was great, or should I say “everything was fantastic.” He didn’t give any warning signs to the CEO, the person who counted the most. The end result is that when Bob left, the CEO was not impressed. He was left high and dry with not enough time to find a replacement.
If Bob played his card rights, he would have done a few things differently. First, he would have had a candid conversation with the CEO as soon as he was considering leaving. He would do this in a respectful way and put his cards on the table. This would give the CEO adequate time to respond to his concerns and it would give the CEO time to figure out if he could meet Bob’s needs. If it was not possible to retain Bob (and in this case I don’t believe it was), the CEO would have enough lead time to replace him. In the ideal world, the CEO would have three months to find a replacement regardless of what Bob’s contract said.
Now, you may be thinking, “If I told my boss I was planning to quit, what would happen if I didn’t land another job? Isn’t this career suicide?” This is where the gray zone comes into play. You need to do a thorough market analysis of your skills and you need to be clear on what you want to do next before you talk to your boss. You don’t want to tell your boss you are planning on quitting, if you have no idea what you want to do next. You need to do your homework first.
A key variable in this equation is also the job market. Could you land another job in three months given market conditions? If the answer is “yes” or “probably” then you are in good shape. If the answer is “no,” than you need to plant your networking seeds first and when you start to see some traction then give as much notice as possible.
It is also perfectly legitimate to say to your boss, “I plan on leaving within the year” without giving a firm date. As a confidante to executives, I have found that executives really appreciate this heads up. They feel “in the know.” If you report into an executive other than the CEO, this heads up is particularly important. When you quit, the CEO will likely drill your boss about why, especially if you are a high performer. If your boss has no idea that you were planning on resigning and is completely surprised, it is does not bode well for their personal performance as a leader. Most leaders know that they can’t retain everyone, but they don’t like to be left looking like a fool because of surprise resignations from high potentials.
Is it time for you to identify the future leaders of your business? Do you need to be proactive about your leadership development needs? One of the first steps to being proactive about leadership development is to do a talent review. This is a systematic process for identifying high potential leaders in your business and for creating leadership development plans. Here are three key success factors which will maximize the return on your talent review investment.
1) Process Integrity – If you use a consistent process for identifying high potential leaders, you will have high quality and reliable talent data. This means that you will know at a glance which people want to progress in your business, people’s readiness is for progression and where your biggest leadership gaps are. Armed with this information, you can do a risk analysis which tells you where you need to invest your leadership dollars and where it makes sense to cultivate internal talent versus external candidates. You will also know who is a retention risk. There is no point in overly investing in people who do not plan on staying with your business.
2) Talent Review Attendance – If you want the talent review to work there are some critical people who need to attend. You need to have an HR presence or Leadership consultant who can coordinate the process and gather the critical information, and you need the head of business units and the direct manager to prepare for the talent review and to participate. Without these key people present, you will not have continuity, accountability, or good results. According to a recent study by the Bersin and Associations and the Center for Creative Leadership (2009), only 25% of companies believe they have the right people present in their talent reviews.
3) Business Strategy and Career Alignment – Leadership development goals need to satisfy two key stakeholders: 1) the individual leader and 2) the business needs. Discussions in the talent review need to focus on what positions will drive business results, and what skills and capabilities will be needed in the future. Once you know this, you can then start to build individual development plans which satisfy people’s career goals. If people do not want to stay with your business, or have no interest in developing into leadership positions, you will be wasting your resources on these people. It is better to face the facts and look at this data honestly, rather than do leadership development just for the sake of it. By facing the facts, you can create a succession strategy that truly minimizes future risks to the business and addresses leadership gaps in creative ways.
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