1. Innovations in succession management methods and applications
Steven T. Hunt, Ph.D., SPHR
Director of Business Transformation

2. Agenda What is high impact succession management?
Major succession management questions
What are the business goals?
Who to include in the process?
How to evaluate talent?
How to develop talent?
How to deploy the process?
Conclusion 2

3. High Impact Succession Management
Replacement Planning
Who should replace this person if they leave?
Depends on creating lists of available candidates
High Impact Succession Management
How can we maintain a steady supply of high performing talent in pivotal roles across the organization?
Depends on aligning
Career Development to help employees achieve their full potential
Performance Management to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of employees in their current role
Recruiting to fill positions with the best available talent
Workforce planning to anticipate and prepare for future talent needs.
Compensation to incent people who develop high potential talent and to encourage high potential talent to remain with the company

4. Effective succession management integrates multiple talent management processes
From Jim Irvine
Nissan, Inc.

5. Technology makes this integration possible
Effectively collecting and tracking talent information
Sharing data across processes
Providing access to tools for identifying, evaluating & developing talent

6. Question 1. What are the goals of succession management and how can you measure them?

7. Question 1. What are the goals of succession management and how can you measure them?
Identify candidates for key roles
Rapidly fill positions
More accurate staffing decisions
Accelerate development
Increased employee engagement & retention
Shared expectations about talent & performance
Increase diversity in key positions
Retain critical organizational expertise
% of key positions filled
Time to fill for key roles
Turnover rate of high potential employees
% of positions filled with internal promotions
% of employees with career development plans
# of “ready now” candidates identified for key roles
% of employees with certain demographics in key roles
Employee engagement scores
Retention of high performers
Quality of leadership
Market share
Profit and Loss
New product innovations
Decreased litigation
Consistent production output and quality
Customer satisfaction
…other things relevant to non-HR leaders
Succession Impact
Succession Metrics
Business Outcomes

8. 1. What are the goals of succession management and how can you measure them?
What is the benefit of effective succession management from the perspective of:
Leaders
Managers
Employees
Human Resources
What metrics will show that your succession management process is working:
In six months?
In one year?
In three years?

9. Question 2. What positions and people will be included in the succession management Process?

10. Moving from person to process based Succession Management
Person Based Succession
Asks: “who do I need to replace and who do I know that can replace them?
Emphasizes filling currently open positions
Decisions largely based on “who you know”
Pressures leaders to change jobs to fit the needs of the available candidates
Rewards leaders who horde top talent so they have it when they need it

11. Moving from person to process based Succession Management
Person Based Succession
Process Based Succession
Asks: “who do I need to replace and who do I know that can replace them?
Asks: “what are the pivotal jobs in the company and where can we find the talent to perform these jobs”
Emphasizes filling currently open positions
Emphasizes planning and maintaining a steady supply of talent for ongoing workforce demands
Decisions largely based on “who you know”
Decisions based on clearly defined criteria for assessing potential
Pressures leaders to change jobs to fit the needs of the available candidates
Enables leaders to develop candidates to meet the requirements of the job
Rewards leaders who horde top talent so they have it when they need it
Encourages leaders to share talent with confidence that equal or better talent will be shared with them

12. 2. What positions and people will be included in Succession Management?
What are the key positions in the organization?
Pivotal roles: where small differences in performance have large impacts on profitability
Critical roles: that are crucial to keeping the business running
Developmental roles: that are instrumental to preparing employees for pivotal and critical roles
What people are consider as potential candidates for these positions?
Based on current job or role
Based on specific qualifications
Based on manager and/or self-nomination
Why not include everyone who works for you?

13. Question 3. How will candidates be identified, qualified, and evaluated for roles?

14. What makes someone a good candidate?
Aspirations, mobility, constraints
Career Goals (What employees WANT TO DO)
Technical Qualifications (What employees HAVE DONE)
Learning Agility
(What employees CAN DO)
Career Potential (want to do)
Aspirations, mobility, constraints
Technical Qualifications (have done)
Skills and Experiences
Learning Agility (can do)
Cognitive agility
Social agility
Change agility
Development should not be viewed as something done outside of a person’s day to day job. It should be
viewed as part of the job itself (Hall & Mirvis, 1995). The best way to ensure employee development is to
give employees work goals that they can only accomplish by building new competencies or learning new
skills. When managers and employees meet to discuss job goals, part of the discussion should include
ensuring that some of goals require the employee to develop new capabilities. The company must also
demonstrate a commitment to helping the employees learn the new competencies and skills they will
need to achieve these goals. This includes providing coaching support, training materials, and other
learning resources that allow them to develop the capabilities they need to succeed.
A manufacturing company reinforced the concept of integrating development into work by changing
their goal setting process to incorporate employee development. The process started with managers
listing the business goals the company needed to achieve that year. Managers then asked their
employee to rate the business goals on three dimensions:
Criticality: the goal’s importance to the business
Interest: whether the goal matched the employee’s personal career objectives
Development: whether the employee would have to perform new tasks or
learn new things in order to achieve the goal
The manager and employee used this framework to develop a set of goals that balanced the company’s
business needs and the employees’ development. Key to this discussion was an underlying
commitment by the organization to ensuring that employees are continuously building their
capabilities for the future. The company clearly stated that it is not enough for employees to simply
achieve their job objectives each year. Employees must also improve themselves as well.
Cognitive, Social, & Change capablities
Skills and experiences

15. Common types of evaluation criteria
5/27/2018 4:58 PM
Common types of evaluation criteria
Qualification Criteria
Requirements: time in current role, citizenship requirements, current position, etc.
Nomination process: manager recommendation, self identification, etc.
“Hard” Criteria
Career Goals & Constraints
Job interests, geographic mobility
Skills & Experiences
“Soft” Criteria
Job Relevant Competencies
Learning Capabilities
Cognitive Ability, Social/Relationship Skills, Dealing with Change
Commitment Criteria
Turnover risk
Support for company mission and values
Choice Points
How will candidates be evaluated?
How will you measure candidates based on qualifications, aptitudes, and interests? What assessment methods will be used?
Who has access to assessment data? How are they trained?
Who will be involved in the evaluation process?
How will you compare candidates? (e.g. nine box, coached ratings, forced ranking, etc.)
How frequently will you critically review candidates?
Will candidates receive feedback on their assessment results?
How will you validate the accuracy of assessment results?

16. Building an employee scorecard

17. Comparing succession candidates

18. Question 4. How will candidates be developed?

19. Doing things that are important
Question 4. How will candidates be developed? 1 2 3 4 5
Stretch assignments
Doing things people
have not done before
Where people
realize their
potential
Critical assignments
Doing things that are important
to business success

20. 4. How will candidates be developed?
Will “hi pos” be formally notified?
How will managers be incented to develop candidates?
Developmental job
assignments
Most
Effective
High potential leadership programs (leadership academies) I m p a c t
Action learning/stretch work assignments
Active mentoring
relationships
360 feedback
& coaching
Independent
training
Informal feedback
Least
Effective
Leadership support

21. Question 5. How can you ensure adoption of Succession Methods?

22. Integration/Consolidation
5/27/2018 4:58 PM
Takes about 3 years to turn succession from an “event” to a way of doing business
Impact
Talent mgmt practices aligned to specific business needs
Transformation
Strategic Change: Platform for strategic change and optimal utilization of talent
Operational Insight: Data-driven insights for understanding, monitoring , and improving talent
Talent management processes evaluated & predicted based on well-defined data analytics
Integration/Consolidation
Comprehensive: Methods effectively supporting major talent management needs
Well-defined and widely adopted methods and tools
Technology enabled talent management processes
Automation
Efficiency: Efficient & consistent methods; able to monitor usage
Basic processes defined for managing talent
Manual
Standardization:
Defined methods, often inefficient & inconsistently used
Talent decisions based on local knowledge & practices
Undefined
Confusion & underutilization:
Uncontrolled; inefficient; high risk treatment of employees
Organization Maturity 22

23. 5. How can you ensure adoption and use of Succession Methods?
Common Reasons for resisting Succession Management
Senior Leaders: Must use a consistent and transparent process to promote talent. Cannot base decisions solely on “intuition”. Must defend talent choices.
What incentives are in place to ensure senior leadership embraces, supports and actively participates in the process?
Managers: Must nominate and risk losing their best people to another part of the business. In return, they will get people not fully ready for the open position who may be unfamiliar to them.
How are managers rewarded for developing talent for other parts of the company?
Employees: Are evaluated and labeled. Pressure on high po’s to achieve superior results. Low po’s feel undervalued with no career future.
How are people treated if they do not qualify or do not want to be high po’s? What assurances do employees have that they might become a high po’s in the future?
Human Resources: Must comply with processes from “corporate”. May resist methods that they feel are not right for their group our department.
What methods do local HR professionals have that will allow them to influence or modify the process to ensure it aligns with local cultural and business needs?

24. Final thoughts on getting started
Start small and build over time, but have a roadmap for scaling
Create methods that allow you to measure who is or is not following the process
Leverage and integrate existing talent management processes;
Collect data once and use it multiple times
Take action based on evaluations;
Succession planning without development is just “taking inventory”
Give employees and managers an incentive to actively participate in the process

25. Thank you for your time and attention!
For more information:
me at
SuccessFactors white paper “The Five Key Questions for Creating High Impact Succession Management Programs” (
Interviews on Business Execution Radio: