Succession planning has always been a critical factor contributing to an organizationâs continuity. But if youâll go back to your succession planning playbook â from your MBA class in organizational design, your HR task force, or your consultantâs slide deck â youâll see that your organizationâs succession planning hasnât changed very much, if at all.
Well, that wonât cut it anymore, because the world for which youâre planning is going to be so different from the one for which youâve planned, that the most fundamental underpinnings must be challenged. To proceed in making and supporting that point, letâs look at the widely accepted 15-step blueprint for succession planning that is eerily identical when you compare them one to the next.
1. Identify Key Roles.
2. Assess Current Talent
3. Develop a Talent Pipeline
4. Succession Planning Committee
5. Gap Analysis
6. Individual Development Plans
7. Mentorship and Coaching
8. External Recruitment
9. Leadership Development Programs
10. Performance Management
11. Communication and Transparency
12. Emergency Succession Plans
13. Regular Review and Adjustment
14. Legal and Diversity Considerations
15. Feedback and Evaluation
Year after year, decade after decade, this algorithm of organizational change gets wheeled out, exercised, and put back on the shelf for future use. Now, however, as the world stares into what I believe will be the most foundational changes ever â led, in the charge, by A.I. â the above model falls short on many counts, including the first step.
So, without succumbing to the temptation of trashing the whole thing â parts of it just ainât broke â here are the changes that weâll need to make to succession planning in what will be a very, very different â irrevocably different â world.
1. Before identifying key roles, how about imagining key roles that donât currently exist? As long ago as 2012, I stated that 25% of the jobs in the workforce by 2025 would be jobs that didnât exist then. I got a lot of push back, especially from deniers and Luddites, but now we already have natural language processing, deep learning, machine learning, A.I. research scientist, and so on. And thatâs just in A.I. Itâs not that these jobs didnât exist; they did. But unless theyâre on your org chart or succession planning white board, youâre not planning for the future â and I rest my case.
2. Find and enlist the most fearless-thinking, creative minds â from within and without the traditional succession planning hierarchy â and ask them what roles they see. Then listen to them.
3. Make sure these players comprise the most diverse thought streams possible. âDiversity is the art of thinking independently together.â Know who said that? None other than Malcolm Forbes.
4. Develop a list of traits, not skills, that your future successors will need. Skills will fall off the train faster and faster as the world changes at a dizzying pace, but traits like creativity, trust, confidence, flexibility, subjugated ego, and readiness stay around forever.
5. Self-sufficient recruitment. Unless your current internal and external recruiters can change as fast and as vastly as necessary, build your own recruitment team like your organizationâs life depends on it. It does.
6. Build an extensive library of resources documenting great leaders. They should be from in and out of business. Make these case studies and biographies required reading as well as subjects for discussion groups. Create simulation group learning scenarios.
As for the rest, mix and match the steps you see fit, most of which make sense as it is. But going into 2024âs succession planning without the above suggestions will, in my view, make 2025âs succession planning less of a sure thing.