Promote Openness and Transparency

#7 of 9 in our weekly succession planning blog post series:

Our guest blogger, Paul Riley is life-long learner of Organizational Leadership and Change who applies systems thinking and community development principles to help people work more effectively together within the complex human systems we create.

This week’s blog post focuses on the fifth principle of the 7 principles of successful Succession Planning - #5: Promote Openness and Transparency. Many organizations view succession planning as a task for senior managers. As a result mid-level managers, supervisors and front-line staff don’t play an active role in the process. This can contribute to a perception among employees that there’s a lack of opportunity for advancement within the organization because they’re not involved in important conversations about the organization’s future and the roles they might play to support the company’s vision. Employees often become discouraged by the perceived lack of opportunity and become complacent, and some give up on their career aspirations altogether. This significantly impacts motivation, engagement and commitment to the organization. As a result the most talented employees typically decide to leave the company to pursue opportunities for growth and advancement elsewhere. By the time you get to the exit interview, it’s too late to persuade a “high-potential” employee to stay.

Senior managers often fear that employees will become discouraged if they’re not selected as a succession candidate. But the opposite is actually true. Employees who are passed over for a promotion typically become more engaged and motivated when they understand why they were not selected. Employees who are overlooked most likely want to be considered too, but they need to know what opportunities are available to them and understand what they need to do to get there. Creating open and transparent succession planning processes and systems will help employees figure out what they need to do to move to the next level.

I’ve also worked with senior managers who think that succession planning is not practical, because there simply aren’t any positions expecting to become vacant in the short- or mid- term. They often believe that employees will want to leave if they realize that there’s nowhere for them to go in the organization. But this logic is flawed for two reasons. First, you never know when somebody might unexpectedly leave, so you should always be planning for somebody in the organization to take over key positions or responsibilities should the need arise. Second, we’ve learned that when we focus on developing people, they become more committed to the organization. It’s scary for many managers to think that they’re preparing people to leave the organization, but that’s essentially what it takes to convince people to stay: show them that they are valued by giving them the tools and skills they need to advance in their careers, even if that means that they might take their knowledge and skills elsewhere. It’s counterintuitive, and it works.

Organizations that don’t communicate openly about their succession plans often find that employees aren’t motivated to develop themselves, because they don’t see “what’s in it for them,” preferring work-life-balance to the challenges they see their immediate supervisors dealing with every day. An open process promotes continual development of leadership potential in the rank and file. It also encourages staff to take ownership of their own professional growth, because they’re more aware of organizational expectations and what it takes to advance. Companies often benefit from “cascading development” as well, because employees share the knowledge and expertise that they acquire from development activities.

As I discussed in Part 3, succession planning programs must align with the organization’s strategy. It’s difficult to imagine a company that sets strategic objectives but neglects to communicate the strategic plan with its employees. Succession planning requires open and transparent communication to be effective. Organizations can promote openness and transparency by communicating about succession planning processes, defining clear career paths, and offering greater performance feedback. In other words, it must become integrated into performance management and talent management processes and systems.

Many organizations use web-based solutions to promote openness and transparency, because it allows employees to have greater access to information about opportunities within the organization while providing tools for knowledge management, employee development, and performance support. Web-based applications that include social media tools such as wikis, blogs, discussion boards, and chat rooms, can also help with managing projects more effectively by allowing employees to share their knowledge and expertise across the organization. Using cross-organizational project teams can help managers identify knowledge, skills, and talents that might otherwise be overlooked. But if web-based solutions are not within your organization’s budget, conversations with employees about their career goals and aspirations during the performance review cycle is a great place to start.

Want to know more about the Seven Principles of Succession Planning? Stay tuned for Part 8 of this series, when I discuss the sixth principle – Develop Simple, Flexible, and Decentralized Processes and Tools.

Also, be sure to check out our other Succession Planning blog posts in this series:

What’s so important about Succession Planning? 

The 7 principles for successful Succession Planning

Aligning Succession Planning programs with the organization’s strategy

Combine Succession Planning and Leadership Development

Include all levels of the organization

Provide opportunities for practice, feedback, and reflection

Free September webinars

It's hard to believe that summer is almost over. With September approaching, I thought I'd post some free webinars that are being offered next month.  Invest some time in keeping yourself up to date with the latest industry information. I've signed up for a number of the webinars so hope to "see" you online.

Thursday, September 1, 10am – 11am PST: Fostering Learning Beyond the Classroom

Karie Willyerd, co-author of The 2020 Workplace and former CLO at Sun Microsystems will explore how you can keep your training and development initiative up to pace with the rapidly evolving dynamics of how, when and where employees acquire knowledge.

Wednesday, September 7, 10am – 11am PST: How to Select an LMS for your Small/Medium Business

Learning management systems (LMS) are playing an increasingly important role in workplace learning and development. These systems provide learners with access to content and provide managers with the ability to track who knows what. Due to high costs and technological infrastructure requirements, large organizations have traditionally been the first to adopt learning management systems. Price and technological barriers are now dropping, making it easy for small- and medium-sized businesses to obtain an LMS.

Thursday, September 8, 10am – 11am: Web 3.0 and the Transformation of Learning

This webinar takes a look at the next evolution of the Web and what it means for the learning function. The differences between high- and low-performing organizations in terms of how they approach these new technologies will be highlighted.

Thursday, September 8, 10am – 11am: From Rapid Authoring to Rapid Reuse – Why Building Mobile Learning Requires a Scalable Content Strategy

The rapid rise of mobile learning has created a resurgence of interest in reusable content models. Nuggets of content, relevant to the individual learner, that are re-assembled and delivered on-demand and to any device. Learn how open, XML-based single-source learning content management solutions are providing a critical advantage an organization’s mobile strategy in terms of time-to-market, product innovation and efficient content development. Real-time demonstrations will be presented that leverage existing content to create flexible iPad and smart phone applications and will show you how easy it is to customize mobile content for different learners and customers.

Wednesday, September 14, 10am-11am PST: The Truth about Social Learning

"Social learning" and "informal learning" are among the training industry's hottest phrases these days. But there's so much confusion over what they mean, and what they mean to those of us in the business. Join Jan Bozarth to look at real examples of social and informal learning as it happens in workplaces all the time, every day. She’ll also generate some ideas for locating, supporting and facilitating social learning opportunities toward the greater goal of enhancing organizational performance.

Tuesday, September 20, 10am – 11am PST: Building a Business Case for Performance and Learning

Join Stacey Harris, VP of Research for Brandon Hall Group as she shares insights on how to create and deliver a business case that resonates, no matter the size or market of your organization. In this presentation, Harris will offer guidance and practical examples on creating a business case for investing in a more effective approach to performance management and employee development. Key take-aways include:

• The business leaders perspective
• Insights on the value of connecting performance management and employee development
• Elements in creating and delivering an effective business case for companies of every size
• Illustrations of business cases that made an impact

Tuesday, September 20, 10am – 11am PST: How to Add “Gamification” to Your eLearning Design

Do you know how Gamification can boost learning effectiveness?  Gamification is the application of theories in gaming, its attendant rewards and its motivational impact. It has caught the attention of both learning designers and elearning developers because gamification presents new opportunities to raise the learner's engagement and learning applications. But how to make it a practical enhancement to the elearning design is a mystery. In this webinar, Ray Jimenez will present case studies on how to apply gamification to enhance your eLearning projects.

Thursday, September 22, 10am – 11am PST: Navigating the Social Learning Roadmap

With more companies and organizations recognizing the value of social learning, we are fast on our way to a major shift in learning. The emergence of social media has enabled us to capture what we do quite naturally, LEARN.During this webinar, you will:

• Discover the career implications of a social learning culture

• Evaluate the value of a social learning strategy within their organization.

• Navigate steps to creating a social learning culture

• Forecast obstacles in the organizational culture that block social learning

• Fuel engagement within the framework of a social learning culture.

Tuesday, September 27, 10am-11am PST: How to Measure Informal and Social Learning Investments

Informal learning measurement (social networks, performance support, coaching) is on the rise. It is important to think about measuring this investment and comparing it against formal programs to determine its mix and place. Questions such as what, when and how to measure informal learning are challenges faced by practitioners using informal learning. This webinar will discuss informal learning capabilities, how to measure them and what resources are available to make measurement practical.

Thursday, September 29, 10am – 11am PST: Creating eLearning Stories and Exercises with Articulate Storyline®

There are two daunting tasks when using stories and exercises in eLearning: creating a good design, and authoring the software. Instead of focusing the quality of the lessons into engaging learning, designers and developers spend more time in the production work. This slows down the delivery and increases the cost. This clinic will present proven ways in using stories and exercises to engage learners as well as step by step methods to develop events, characters, choices and consequences and to quickly convert them into eLearning by using Articulate's new software, Storyline®

Provide opportunities for practice, feedback, and reflection

#6 of 9 in our weekly succession planning blog post series:

Our guest blogger, Paul Riley is life-long learner of Organizational Leadership and Change who applies systems thinking and community development principles to help people work more effectively together within the complex human systems we create.

This week’s blog post focuses on the fourth principle of the 7 principles of successful Succession Planning: #4: Provide opportunities for practice, feedback, and reflection. The organizations that succeed at developing a sustainable leadership pipeline, approach succession planning as more than a process of updating a list. They prepare individuals for future roles. However, our focus on short-term results and managing the day-to-day operations often competes with our ability to actively support and develop future leaders, which can result in poor placement and promotion outcomes as employees aren’t properly prepared to move to the next level in their careers. Therefore, organizations should create processes and systems that facilitate the transfer of knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) and also achieve organizational results.

Experiential learning is one of the most effective ways to provide developmental opportunities while simultaneously achieving business objectives. And research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership indicates that leaders and emerging leaders prefer experiential learning opportunities. Experiential learning techniques include job rotation, lateral moves across functions and business units, cross-functional assignments, mentoring, coaching, communities of practice (CoP), and action learning teams. Many of these experiential methods can be implemented in combination to achieve multiple objectives. For example, cross-functional team assignments can be used to facilitate action learning and promote strategic thinking, team building, collaboration, leadership, and management skills.

The action learning process is based on a belief in individual potential. Participants of an action learning team typically work on complex, strategic issues that have no right answer and aren’t amendable to quick or expert-based solutions. Through these experiences, participants learn to work on teams, and they learn skills needed to influence others over whom they have no direct authority. Most importantly, they learn how to learn more effectively and intentionally from their actions, by taking the time to question, understand and reflect, and to gain insights about how they might act in future situations.

Action learning teams are generally easy to set up. In Action Learning: A Practical Guide for Managers,  Weinstein suggests six main elements:

1. The team – a small group of five or six people who meet regularly to work together in a supportive yet challenging way
2. The ‘learning vehicle’ – work-focused, real-time projects or tasks that each person, or the team as a whole, focuses on during the program
3. The processes the team adopts when working – each person has their own space in which to work on their project; the team meanwhile adopts a helpful questioning approach (no advice, and no general discussions)
4. A team adviser – who helps the group as it works and learns
5. The duration of a program – normally three to six months
6. The emphasis on learning – which emerges both from working on the projects and from working on the team

Researchers have found that learning is generally affected by three elements: (1) amount of challenge, (2) variety of tasks or assignments, and (3) quality of feedback. Therefore, experiential learning programs should be designed to provide continuous feedback to help participants reflect on both individual and group learning processes and outcomes. Multisource feedback has gained widespread use in recent years. For instance, upward feedback from subordinates has been found to be useful for leadership development, and peer feedback is most effective in team-based training, providing participants with opportunities to practice giving and receiving feedback. Mentors and coaches also play an integral role in providing timely and relevant feedback and helping learners reflect on their performance.

One of the challenges of experiential learning can be that learners don’t have time for reflection as they’re caught up in the action and are immersed in the demands and challenges of the work. We’re often more results-driven than process-oriented. As Peter Senge points out in The Fifth Discipline, we typically assume that a person who’s sitting quietly at his or her desk isn’t busy, so we feel compelled to interrupt, rather than assume that the person is deep in thought and shouldn’t be disturbed. This mindset can inhibit learning, because we don’t often give people the time or space to reflect on feedback or experiences. So, it may be necessary to implement a more formal and methodical process that provides opportunities for feedback and reflection on a regular basis. After all, although it’s important to achieve business objectives, it’s equally important that people are able to learn from their experiences. Otherwise the ultimate objective of the action learning program won’t be achieved.

Want to know more about the Seven Principles of Succession Planning? Stay tuned for Part 7 of this series, when I discuss the fifth principle – Promote openness and transparency.

Also, be sure to check out our other Succession Planning blog posts in this series:

What’s so important about Succession Planning? 

The 7 principles for successful Succession Planning

Aligning Succession Planning programs with the organization’s strategy

Combine Succession Planning and Leadership Development

Include all levels of the organization

Include All Levels of the Organization

#5 of 9 in our weekly succession planning blog post series:

Our guest blogger, Paul Riley is life-long learner of Organizational Leadership and Change who applies systems thinking and community development principles to help people work more effectively together within the complex human systems we create.

This week’s blog post focuses on the third principle of the 7 principles of successful Succession Planning: #3: Include All Levels of the Organization. In order to develop a sustainable leadership pipeline, organizations must include all levels from executive management to the front-line in succession planning and leadership development.  When I ask senior leaders to identify key positions in their organizations, they generally focus on senior management and executive positions. However, in today’s knowledge economy, workers on the front line often know more than their managers, so it’s dangerous to assume that only managers, or those with formal authority, are important enough to consider in succession planning. So when we ask ourselves which positions in the organization are vital to sustaining operations, we should consider all levels.

Succession planning is often viewed as a task for senior managers and executives to complete during their annual strategic planning session. But when mid-level managers and supervisors are not actively engaged in the process, potential successors are sometimes overlooked. Even worse, key staff often leave due to the lack of opportunities, taking valuable knowledge and experience with them. This not only has a negative impact on institutional memory and collective corporate culture, but it can also result in a cycle of further turnover as higher demands are placed on those who remain, which often leads to increased stress and burnout.

Infusing leadership at all levels of the organization reduces the pressures of staff turnover by creating a work environment that’s encouraging, healthy, and helpful. As I suggested in an earlier blog post, What’s So Important about Succession Planning?, organizations need to shift away from traditional “management succession planning” and focus on development at all levels through “technical succession planning.” This will contribute to organizational sustainability by retaining tacit knowledge and institutional memory at all levels. And organizations that place more emphasis on transferring knowledge and developing people are more likely to retain talent, because employees feel engaged and motivated by opportunities to learn and grow.

William Rothwell, author of Effective Succession Planning, proposes the following “strategic road map” for technical succession planning that I’ve found useful:

1. Secure and sustain management commitment (including measurable program goals, and clear roles and accountabilities for all key stakeholders)

2. Clarify work processes and technical competencies essential to achieving the organization’s strategic goals

3. Clarify who possesses that knowledge and what they do

4. Identify who is at risk of loss due to retirement or how many new hires are needed due to growth

5. Discover practical ways to distil and transfer invaluable knowledge

6. Transfer the knowledge

7. Evaluate program results (comparing results to measurable program goals)

It’s important to remember that management commitment is essential at all levels of the organization. Although executives can help get the process started, a mandate from the top will fall short when trying to keep the process going. Client demands and the day-to-day busy-ness take priority, and as a result succession planning often takes a back seat. For this reason, accountability needs to be built into the process, so that everyone knows that succession planning is a business imperative.For instance, Colgate has instituted a program that requires managers to retain 90% of high-performers or risk losing a part of their compensation.Another strategy is to set internal recruitment targets for key positions. As the saying goes, “that which gets measured gets done.”

Organizations that succeed at building a sustainable leadership pipeline create processes and systems for managing the talent pool across all levels, which means that everyone in the organization must be actively engaged in the succession planning process.

Want to know more about the Seven Principles of Succession Planning? Stay tuned for Part 6 of this series, when I discuss the fourth principle – Create Opportunities for Practice, Feedback, and Reflection.

Also, be sure to check out our other Succession Planning blog posts in this series:

What’s so important about Succession Planning?

The 7 principles for successful Succession Planning

Aligning Succession Planning programs with the organization’s strategy

Combine Succession Planning and Leadership Development

Combine Succession Planning and Leadership Development

#4 of 9 in our weekly succession planning blog post series:

Our guest blogger, Paul Riley is life-long learner of Organizational Leadership and Change who applies systems thinking and community development principles to help people work more effectively together within the complex human systems we create.

This week’s blog post focuses on the second principle of the 7 principles of successful Succession Planning: #2: Combine Succession Planning and Leadership Development. Succession planning is not only about recognizing leadership gaps that exist in your organization today, but also identifying future leadership needs and creating solutions to address those needs. To meet the challenges of a changing environment, organizations need to plan and work toward establishing capability to adapt. Therefore, it’s essential to build a sustainable pipeline of people with the knowledge, skills, and experience to lead the organization into the future. Although it’s not always possible to accurately predict the future, organizations that put serious effort into planning will generally be more successful at anticipating needs before they arrive and have the capability to effectively navigate the changing landscape.

Organizations are more likely to develop deep and enduring leadership bench strength when they create a long-term process for managing talent that combines succession planning with leadership development. These processes are complementary in that succession planning traditionally focuses on identifying candidates to fill potential or anticipated vacancies and leadership development focuses on preparing candidates for promotion. In my experience, organizations often treat these as separate and independent processes, and they typically place more emphasis on identifying succession candidates than developing them. However, placing increased emphasis on development has a positive impact on retaining top talent, because employees feel engaged and motivated by opportunities to learn and grow, and they are more prepared to successfully move to the next level in their careers.

One of the best ways to identify and develop future leaders is to provide a variety of challenging work assignments. Research suggests that exposure to novel and challenging situations in the workplace promotes development of leadership skills and has a sustained impact on leadership behaviour. And an added benefit of experiential learning is that the organization often achieves its strategic objectives while simultaneously facilitating learning and development. Because a person’s early career is a critical period for learning, organizations should use experiential learning methods to expose emerging leaders to a broad range of problems and situations. Exposure to these experiences will not only equip emerging leaders with the knowledge and skills to adapt to changing business needs, but it will contribute to a sustained corporate culture and institutional memory.

We probably intuitively know that experience is the best teacher, since it’s estimated that organizations rely on experiential learning to provide as much as 70 to 80 percent of developmental experiences for their managers. But the key is to be intentional about it by designing processes and systems to help employees identify potential knowledge or skills gaps and then assign them to projects or positions within the organization that will meet their learning goals. It’s also important to provide opportunities for feedback and reflection to facilitate learning, but I’ll talk more about that later in Part 6 – Create Opportunities for Practice, Feedback, and Reflection.

It’s important to remember that succession planning and leadership development programs have a common goal: to get the right people in the right positions at the right time. By combining the two processes organizations are able to establish a sustainable leadership pipeline and ensure that they’re both identifying and developing top talent.

Want to know more about the Seven Principles of Succession Planning? Stay tuned for Part 5 of this series, when I discuss the third principle – Include all Levels of the Organization.

Be sure to check out our other Succession Planning blog post in this series:

What’s so important about Succession Planning?

The 7 principles for successful Succession Planning

Aligning Succession Planning programs with the organization’s strategy

Aligning Succession Planning Programs with the Organization’s Strategy

#3 of 9 in our weekly succession planning blog post series:

Our guest blogger, Paul Riley is life-long learner of Organizational Leadership and Change who applies systems thinking and community development principles to help people work more effectively together within the complex human systems we create.

This week’s blog post focuses on the first principle of the 7 principles of successful Succession Planning: #1: Align Succession Planning programs with the organization’s strategy. People often think that succession planning is only a useful practice at large corporations or family-owned companies. However, succession planning should be a part of every company’s strategic plan. Who will take over when the current generation of leaders moves on? How will your organization continue as a going concern if you do not nurture and develop your human capital? These questions are relevant in virtually any business. Regardless of size, organizations that commit resources to creating a coherent plan excel at developing a sustainable leadership pipeline.

However, in many of the organizations that I’ve worked with, succession planning is only viewed as a contingency plan to address the worst-case scenario. Managers often think that they’re creating a plan in case a key employee is tragically hit by a bus. When succession planning is viewed as an administrative function that has no place at the strategic planning table, the process often becomes one in which a list of names is revisited annually. Instead of strategically thinking about how people can be prepared to fill key positions, middle and upper managers simply check to see that the people on the list are still employed with the organization, and perhaps eligible for promotion. 

Rather than having each department or division update a list of “high-potentials” on an annual basis, effective succession planning programs must be driven from the top of your organization and complemented by bottom-up career development. Succession planning is more likely to occur when senior management plays an active role in implementing and communicating the program and the process is viewed as an integral part of the organization’s strategy, rather than simply an administrative function.

The following three tips will help management implement, communicate, and integrate succession planning into your organization’s strategy:

1.    Develop processes and systems that support clear and constant communication about your organization’s vision, values, and mission in order to build a shared understanding of the strategic objectives.

2.    Establish organization-wide indicators of success that provide a clear sense of what needs to be done to achieve strategic objectives.

3.    Create succession processes and systems that support employee development, career progression, and well-being while achieving strategic objectives.

General Electric provides a compelling example of how integrating succession planning into the organization’s strategy will develop a strong leadership pipeline and produce outstanding business results over a long period of time. At GE, the HR team plays an integral role at the strategic planning table to ensure that HR initiatives, actions and priorities are aligned in terms of the business plan. As a result, GE has experienced effective transitions at the executive level, from Reg Jones to Jack Welch, and most recently to Jeff Immelt. And at the lower levels of the organization, GE continues to be a model of how to identify, assess, promote, and reward talent within the organization to achieve strategic objectives.

The key word of succession planning is “planning.” In other words, it should be done before a successfully performing employee announces plans to retire or resign, and especially before a position becomes vacant. To ensure that your organization has an adequate supply of people with the knowledge, skills, and experience to lead your organization into the future, succession planning must be integrated into the organization’s strategy.

Want to know more about the Seven Principles of Succession Planning? Stay tuned for Part 4 of this series, when I discuss the second principle – Combine Succession planning and Leadership Development.

Be sure to check out our other Succession Planning blog posts in this series:

What’s so important about Succession Planning? 

The 7 principles for successful Succession Planning