Who do you call?
Steve
This Wednesday, February 25 I have the great honor of presenting a Webcast for HR.com on Workforce and Succession Planning, titled 'Understand your workforce today, so you can plan for tomorrow'
In part, the presentation will cover the more or less traditional, or generally accepted steps in designing and implementing a Succession Planning process. To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, it is altogether fitting and good that I cover these concepts in the webcast.
But as I did the research and preparations for the webcast, I came across some really interesting research that has the potential to alter the idea of 'best practices' for Succession Planning programs.
Namely, the idea that 'who you know' may be as significant as 'what you know' when making a determination of which employees
are likely to demonstrate success and high achievement in a new role.
The common sense reasoning behind this is likely very familiar to most, in the classic example say a Senior Manager position is vacant, and the 'best' performer from among the Manager's direct reports is promoted into the role.
The promotion may be 'deserved' on the basis of past performance in the former job role or based on seniority. The new Senior Manager may even have demonstrated most of the key competencies the organization has determined are necessary to perform at a high level.
But one essential element is missing from typical succession planning, namely the identification and analysis of the former managers key personal network, those colleagues, mentors, friends that he or she has relied upon for aid in decision making, determining strategy, navigating new responsibilities and gaining deep organizational knowledge.
Let's call the departing Senior Manager Jane. Jane, over the years, developed a deep personal network that she drew on to support her in the successful performance of her duties. Specifically, she relied upon different components of her network to support different aspects of her role. For example, the people and resources she relied upon for budgeting and forecasting help, were not the same people she called upon for employee relations and motivation concerns.
This distinction in personal network segregation or specialization is an important one. So often when junior employees are promoted into more senior roles, or placed in managerial roles for the first time, they bring with them very developed practical and technical skills and networks that while still important to their new managerial role, are not always the most critical in predicting success in the new, more complex role. It is quite likely the new manager's skills and perhaps more importantly their current personal networks are centered around those 'old' skills and capabilities.
Let's call the newly promoted manager Jake. Jake was the top engineer and formerly a good designer. The first time the Jake is called on to participate in a complex strategic planning exercise with his new peers, will he perform below his potential at least partly due to the lack of a mature valuable personal network in which to support him in that function? If Jake keeps trying to draw on his 'old' network of designers and engineers, most of whom are not involved in strategic planning, he is in a position to struggle.
How can the HR leader identify and address these situations?
One method is to develop a process to identify the key or top performer's personal networks and the roles those network actors perform. So for Jane, have Jane identify the three or four most important skills or competencies that she needs for success, then identify the key individuals she relies on for support, advice, and guidance. This categorized personal network can then be compared to Jakes', and it is quite probable it will reveal that Jake has not yet developed relationships with many of the KEY players that he will need to count on to be a success in the new role.
Plans can then be put in place to ensure personal introductions and/or meetings are arranged with Jake and these new individuals that he will need to start building his relationships with. This kind of intervention can be a key factor in how quickly Jake adapts to his new role, and quite possibly if he ultimately succeeds at all.
A by-product of this kind of personal network analysis is that in can reveal much about the 'hidden' stars or key cogs in an organization. If analysis of the personal networks of your staff of senior managers reveals that all or most of them call upon a key individual or two somewhere down the hierarchy for advice and counsel, the organization would be well served to to make sure those key influencers are happy, and that adequate succession plans exist for them, even if they are considered on paper to not be critical or 'high-potential'.
Who employees turn to for help and information is a incredibly valuable piece of organizational intelligence.
Who do you call?
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