04/ 12/ 2006
by Charles R. McConnell
Succession planning refers to the ongoing development of potential successors to ensure a smooth transition and minimum loss of efficiency when management vacancies occur. Why consider succession planning? Often, the reasons for doing so are evident whenever a management position remains open for a few weeks or months. Most businesspeople have seen the disruption that can result from the unexpected loss of a manager; a sudden vacancy can lead to confusion and loss of efficiency as the search for a replacement is conducted. Even if the vacancy isn't abrupt but follows a planned departure, recruitment can often take several weeks longer than the departing manager spends working out a period of notice.
Whether the approach is formal or informal, businesses have known potential successors for all levels of management. In some large organizations, succession planning is formal and structured with potential upper-level managers being put through development activities, including on-the-job trials that test them with specifically delegated assignments.
Smaller organizations rarely engage in formal succession planning, but they aren't really necessary. Each manager can identify and prepare potential successors without a formal program. First-line managers who oversee the activities of employees doing hands-on work have the best opportunity to develop successors.
Tools for identifying successors
For first-line managers, the keystone of succession planning is proper delegation. In its simplest form, succession planning consists of proper delegation, plus a conscientious approach to performance evaluation. These two processes combine to provide managers with all the succession planning help they need. Properly done, a performance evaluation is a development tool; it assesses how well an employee does relative to expectations and identifies areas of growth potential.
The manager’s strongest informal succession planning tool, however, is proper delegation. Most managers learn firsthand that one person can do just so much and still do a job well. Managers who try to do it all become spread so thin that eventually they do nothing well. Proper delegation helps managers do a better job and tells them which employees can handle more responsibility. Delegation will also familiarize workers with some of the manager’s responsibilities, so a few employees will be partially prepared to fill in for the manager if necessary.
Most first-line managers would like to be promoted someday. But the manager who does not delegate well does nothing to develop a potential successor, and this alone can be enough to mark the manager unfit for a promotion. Many managers have been passed over for promotion because they failed to develop potential successors; promotion would leave a void in his or her former area. Also, higher management may reason that the first-line manager who doesn't delegate effectively at that level is not likely to delegate any better at an advanced level where delegation becomes even more important.
Failing to develop successors
Why do some first-line managers fail to develop potential successors? Some, perhaps lacking self-confidence, fear competition from their subordinates. But the confident manager knows that having one or two sharp up-and-coming subordinates can maintain healthy pressure on the manager and help him or her avoid falling into complacency. Also, some managers complain that developing subordinates as potential successors simply raises their hopes. As one supervisor expressed: “Then when they don't get my job or another management job, they leave––and I've lost good employees.” But even if the manager doesn't make the effort to develop potential successors, the better employees will leave because of lack of challenge and absence of growth opportunity. It’s always the better workers who leave for greener pastures, so over the long haul the department becomes staffed with mediocrity. Eager and ambitious employees may very well leave when they begin to feel limited, but they do some of their best work while they are learning, growing and looking to move up.
Whether one calls it succession planning or something else, it makes good business sense for each manager to continually develop one or more potential successors. No one is indispensable, but the absence or loss of an employee can cause inconvenience that could readily be avoided with some forethought to serious employee development. Planning for how your shoes will be filled when you are no longer there and even planning for knowledgeable coverage when you are ill or vacationing simply makes good sense. It pays to regard succession planning as part of every manager’s job.
