Succession Planning Services - How to Choose a Future Leader  |
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 How many team members has your organization lost due to poor succession planning?Do you know who to train and develop to become the managers and leaders of tomorrow? Is succession planning a key component of your organization's employee retention strategy? For many organizations succession planning is seldom given much thought or consideration until it becomes an apparent need. This can be a very risky approach which can result in two devastating outcomes: the loss of talented team members and the hasty promotion of individuals not yet ready to move up the organizational ladder. Every year, in every industry, in organizations across the country, highly talented team members are lost because of a non-existent or poorly executed succession plan strategy. To elaborate further, these employees often leave because they perceive a lack of opportunity for upward mobility and advancement within an organization. Quite simply for many it is easy to become frustrated or discouraged when there is not an apparent plan by superiors for their professional development within the organization. This is especially true for individuals who are highly motivated and driven to achieve high status within an organization. For individuals driven by professional success and status, they often times will not wait around for opportunities to emerge if they do not see them as attainable in the near to intermediate future. A second harmful outcome of a poorly implemented or non-existent succession plan is the hasty promotion of team members not suited or not yet ready to take on a leadership or management role. Upper levels of management often fall victim promoting an individual based on his or her knowledge, skills, and abilities in their current role. This is a very common mistake to make as it is based on the presumption that an individual who excels in his or her current role will naturally be an excellent choice to take on added responsibilities and job duties in a leadership role. Can you really blame the managers? It seems like the natural, common sense thing to do when considering who to promote from within the organization.  However in many situations there is little correlation between success in a previous role and success in a more advance position within the organization. Hasty and ill informed promotion decisions can have a serious impact on the organization as a whole. As an individual struggles in his or her new role this can begin to create doubt and second guessing by those he or she now manages. This can cause an infectious decline in organizational morale and production. As the newly promoted team member realizes the difficulty she is facing in the new position she might begin to doubt her own abilities and the decisions she is making. In many cases this individual now realizes she is not cut out for the new position; fearful of termination and too proud to return to her previous job, she will often times choose to leave the organization. The ramifications of this should be apparent: not only does the organization need to fill the abandoned position once again, but it has also lost a very valuable and talented team member in a lower, albeit still important level of the organization. Many organizations believe that it has an effective management succession plan in place after it determines who will replace a given manager who is likely to retire shortly or move up to a higher rank in the company. In actuality this is not succession planning, but rather replacement planning. Replacement planning does play an important role in succession planning, but the majority of succession planning activities should revolve around training and developing the pool of individuals chosen as candidates to move up in the organization.  Paramount to developing these team members is an in depth understanding of the individual's strengths and weaknesses, as well as their behaviors, values/motivators, and aptitudes. By knowing where an individual's strengths and weaknesses lie, how he or she is likely to act in a new role, and what will motivate this individual, an organization can begin to make informed decisions with respect to leadership succession planning. At The Rainmaker Group we have the succession planning tools you need to help identify and develop the leaders of tomorrow in your organization. Through a comprehensive personality assessment that reveals an individual's behaviors, values/motivators, and personal talents your organization can begin to carefully evaluate who to groom for future management and leadership roles. The assessments available to The Rainmaker Group will deliver valuable insights into what kind of manager an individual will likely be in the future. This can help identify areas for development and improvement that will dramatically increase the likelihood of success when the individual assumes a greater responsibility in the organization. The assessments used by The Rainmaker Group can also help your organization to identify individuals who, despite their excellent qualifications and likely fit within the company, would be poor hiring decision due to their strong drive for professional advancement and a lack of immediate advancement opportunities available within the organization. It can be very hard to pass up candidates such as these, but in the long run both parties will be better off as the candidate will likely leave as the lack of opportunity for advancement becomes apparent. Every individual deserves the opportunity to reach his or her dreams, and if your organization is unable to offer that opportunity the job candidate and your organization will be better off selecting someone else. Succession Planning is critical to the vitality of your organization. Don't leave it to chance! Start making the most informed decisions today and develop the right talent for the right job. Give us a shout, we're here to help and would love to hear from you! 1-866-988-RAIN  More Information on Employee Retention
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