Art of Succession Planning

Delhi, Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Art of succession planning

There used to be an era when succession planning was a reserved term for Human resources department only and even today when someone talks about this it is wrongly misinterpreted as an approach for paving stone for a layoff and there is also a big misconception that this practice is observed at CEO, CFO, CXO CFO levels which is not the fact.

Today for you to be respected as a successful leader and to build a strong organization, it’s must   to excel in learning this sensitive art.

So what actually is Succession planning?

Well although the term has been derived from the word “Successor” which means – “a person who succeeds another in an office, position, or the like” but when it actually comes to use this in an office, process or project, some people communicate the intention in totally wrong way that it seems that someone is talking about throwing you out of company.

The concept zeroes down to the fact that people are also categorized as an important asset in a company and over the years, they do carry knowledge, become experienced and become critical for the continual success of company and any organization that has weak succession planning is always at a very high risk.

To put it in another way, Succession planning in any company is an effort to secure rapport, future growth, fame and business continuity by ensuring that all its critical resources have a successor and In case of any unfortunate or unavoidable incident, there is very little or no risk involved at all.

Army is good candidate to draw an analogy here. All defense forces have the successors identified at critical positions and say in case of an event of death of chief of forces, country is not put at a stake and there are well identified persons to take charge immediately who have demonstrated the same intellect, same skill sets to take over if need arises and secure nation of its interests

How is this done, are there any fixed rules?

Well although this comes under the umbrella of human resources department. In case your organization runs this practice, chances are that you may have found lots of forms, ratings to be completed, which at times makes this exercise more frustrating and makes us believe that it’s a futile exercise

But you can have your own custom process and trust me it pays you off in long run, if you exercise this in your team

My three step program

1)      Identify, Plan and Execution-   We always have critical people in organization including ourselves which are very important to business continuity. All such people should be identified and I normally practice two successors for a single critical position. All critical resources are covered under this.
There is no fuss involved. Plan could be as good as a word document or excel sheet enlisting major duties, key accounts, projects handled by a person. Identified successor(s) and date of completion of succession but one must ensure that planning is converted into action and is yielding results. Most of us end up making too many plans but no actions and I am one of them at least in case of reducing my weight, every year I make up plan, document it but no tracking and no actions

2)      Delegate and take risks-   Delegation is basic entity of succession. Identified successor should be delegated critical tasks and supervised over a period of time followed by accreditation to ensure process is completed and deadline should be defined and adhered to complete this process.

Take some risks also by betting on people who seem promising and eligible for succession but may have couple of levels / hierarchy in between them and default successor. You would be amazed with results and would automatically create deep root succession

3)      But you never told me today is my exam- Over the year(s) I have seen that we wait for crisis to happen and then we check that are we well equipped to handle the situation.  Once succession is completed, we should regularly audit and check our response.

 I have my teams spread geographically and each location has a point of contact and in his or her absence, successor is supposed to ensure continued services to client. I usually wait for opportunity when my point of contact is on leave and I become a mock client and check that is out of office is set?  Is someone picking voip/phone or call forwarding of is in place?

 I intentionally set the challenges for that location to see the response and then identify corrective measures for any lapses and improvement areas, trust me this work wonders and assures me and my organization of business continuity. So surprise checks are the key to validate how prepared you are?

Bounty:

a)      Today my team mates never complaint that they cannot go on vacation or take an off

b)      I ensure 24X7 support to clients and achieve good customer satisfaction

c)       Projects are not people dependent and this ensures that a particular profile does not become indispensable to organization including myself

d)      Team members are happy as when they complete the succession accreditation that means they are eligible for promotions and this process make them  demonstrate their capability much ahead of actual promotion

RAJEEV KOUL   Rajeev Koul is Engineering Manager & Department Head-Asia Pacific at Innodata  , he has over  13 years of experience in Program/Project Management for software application Development and Implementation . He is currently heading software development team for APAC and India region