How Leading Organizations Are Evolving Their Succession Management Practices | i4cp

This i4cp article looks at six ways its member organizations are shifting their succession management approaches to better align with a new world of work. These changes include shifting from 1:1 succession plans to talent pools, and moving away from using years (e.g., 1, 2, 3 years until ready) to determine successor readiness, to name a few. Regarding moving away from using years to determine successor readiness, supporting this shift is a growing acknowledgment that people learn at different rates, which can be accelerated with high-impact development assignments. One approach I have seen firms employ to categorize successor readiness is “number of development moves away.” This approach emphasizes the critical experiences needed to speed up a successor’s readiness. While not mentioned in the article, another opportunity is for firms to reevaluate whether geographic location—requiring successors to be in the same office as their teams—is necessary in all cases. This traditional requirement might be relaxed in certain situations because of the rise of remote and hybrid work teams. Eliminating geographic criteria where possible broadens the succession pool and allows firms to tap into more diverse talent for leadership roles—a talent priority of many organizations. If geography is important when identifying successors, firms might want to segment their talent (including successors) using mobility categories, such as global: mobile to any location in the world;  regional: only mobile to locations within certain areas (U.S. only, Latin American only); local: not mobile and needs to remain in his or her current location. This categorization tactic is mentioned by Allan Church in his article, Think Outside the 9-Box.