“Go for a long journey to Excellence rather than short trips to success.”

Executive summary:

“Go for a long journey to Excellence rather than short trips to success.” That sentence concludes my view about what organizations should do to manage their talents after going through this paper.

The first school that believes talent development is evolutionary as a reaction to environmental changes adopts the school of “short trips to success” where they depend on current job training requirements to develop their employee without having a vision for the future. Moreover, they don’t have a clear career path for their employee. They rather depend on a replacement planning where they would either promote high performance candidates without assessing their potential or headhunt new talents depending of the case of “A buyer’s market of skills”

The other school believes that talents should be managed and developed in a systematic way represented in a succession planning and management program. They adopt the school of “long journey to excellence”. They spend time and effort to prepare talents for future challenges, provides individual development plans to their talent pools, with a promise of advancement for each employee in the organization .In that way they ensure leadership continuity, keeping institutional memory and raising individuals morale by offering advancement opportunities on a clear basis of advancement criteria.

I have went through examples to  show a contrast between the two schools listing some activities of talent assessment , development and using software for succession planning & management program .

I have then concluded my position with the reasons for which I strongly support succession planning & management program as the only effective way to ensure organizational excellence for the present and the future.

1. Introduction:

Having the right people is one of the fundamentals of any successful business. Although, almost all the organizations would do much effort to recruit a talent, not all of them believe that a talent should pass through a developmental process. One school assumes talent development is a spontaneous reaction to the changing environment .The other believes that waiting for an action to react would be too late to cope with fast changing competitive environment of business nowadays. They devote enough time for talent management & development through a systematic effort of succession planning & management.

“Succession planning and management is a systematic effort by an organization to ensure leadership continuity in key positions, retain and develop intellectual and knowledge capital for the future & encourage individual advancement.” ( Rothwell, WJ 2010, P41)

It is meant to ensure having the right person, in the right place, at the right time to get the right results.

I will start by the school of thought that depends solely on training, performance appraisal & Management. Then I will define talent management & its integration with succession planning which represents the body of effort of the planned talent development.

2. Evolutionary, Environment driven talent development.

Adopters of this school of thought believes that building a talent in a systematic way wouldn’t have that recognizable impact on the organization performance. They would rather depend on performance management, appraisal as a criteria to promote personnel.

2.1 Performance Management & Appraisal:

Performance management is the process of creating a work environment in which people want to perform to their peak abilities & encouraged to develop themselves in the future

Performance appraisal is the process of determining how well individuals are meeting the work requirements of their jobs. ( Rothwell, WJ 2010,4^th edition, P205)

2.2 Demo AV. Suppliers

Each organization belonging to this school will have its own arguments to defend its ideas. I am going to discuss my own experience in one of those companies who are not willing to implement systematic succession planning.

My company (Demo AV suppliers), 50 workers organization ,works in the field of equipment supply for conferences & exhibitions .board members like the idea of succession planning but they have never believed we would need to do that effort in our organization . The business is going well & we won’t need more investment in personnel. They pay more attention to investing in technology.

Personnel promotion, demotion, or keep-in-place criteria is done using the following grading system:

A: High performer (Exceeds goals)

B: Standard (Achieved Goals)

C: Low performers (Didn’t achieve goals)

Actions:

A: 5 % increase in annual raise, train & promote when possible.

B: Standard annual raise.

C: Low performers, train, reconsider in the next quarter, fire if low performance persist.

You can easily realize many defects in that way of developing people, as there is no succession planning, you don’t really know what could happen, That  A category employee could easily leave the place for a company with a better development planning that would secure him a career plan to match his potential. The B category is already an achiever, yet you just added an annual raise.

Furthermore, there is no clue about employees’ potential. In other words, High performance at one level doesn’t necessarily mean a same performance at a higher level which may require other competencies.

During a recent discussion in our monthly meeting, the idea of not adopting succession planning was defended by the following factors:

• They believe that development is self-driven, and the person who is aiming to have a key position would pay effort to be ready for it.
• A buyer’s market of skills would allow them to hire a top talent with a relatively low price.
• Losing a talent they paid for developing would cost them more than recruiting a new talent.

Although those factors may be true at the moment .I have noted that we are at a big risk of business deterioration due to the following:

• Development could be influenced, personnel are not always able to assess themselves and demonstrate what they need exactly.
• The buyer’s market of skills won’t last forever, it is a matter of time till we reach a stable economic conditions.
• The risk of losing a talent would be disastrous, being a technical field we mainly depend on technical knowledge & intellectual memory which have created many key positions even at the lowest level of employee.

3. Developing talent through succession planning & management program.

Succession planning by definition is the systematic effort done by organization to ensure leadership continuity in key positions, retain, develop intellectual capital for future & encourage individual advancement.

According to lester korn, CEO of the search firm “Boards are beginning to realize that they have the same obligation to protect human resource asset base for as they do to protect the balance sheet of the corporation”  ( Rothwell, WJ 2010,4^th edition, P205)

The case is not only how to find a talent, it is about how to find, develop, retain a talent in a way that would ensure business continuity through the present and the future.

3.1 What is talent management?

It is the process of managing the development & deployment of employees from recruitment to retirement .Talent management activities cover processes that attract, develop & reward employees & includes competency management, learning & development, performance management, compensation, career & succession planning. (Chief Learning Officer, March 2009, p54)

The following diagram best describes the process:

Of course different organizations have unique requirements in its succession planning according to the field of business, business strategy, culture differences and other factors. I am going to list some of those organizations activities to develop talents in a systematic way.

3.2 The Grundfos Group

The Grundfos Group is the world leader in pumping systems, employing over 18,000 staff internationally.

Potential Assessment: The process of examining individual possibilities for job change or movement.

Grundfos performance-potential 9-grid system:

In Grundfos”, says Jessica Wang-HR director of Grundfos china- “we use the nine grid system to evaluate potential versus performance.” This grid (See table below) helps define definitions of limited, moderate and high potential, and poor, good and outstanding performance. Once the roles in an organisation have been agreed upon and benchmarked by all the relevant parties in the hiring process, this grid system is an effective assessment tool for HR professionals.

Jessica wang proceeded “development plans for the individuals can be discussed. When deciding on succession plans, the important boxes which you should focus on will be 1A, 1B and 2A as this makes up the ‘potential pool’.”

(http://www.clarkmorgan.com/performance-or-potential/)

Grundfos recognised the need for a talent development process that would allow them to identify and nurture their talent pipeline. This would allow the company to develop a more dynamic organisational culture that would help them to provide energy efficient technological solutions for an ever growing global population. To do so would require a broadening of their scope led and inspired by its talent of the future.

A&DC (Assessment & development consultants) worked with Grundfos to design and create an assessment process that would evaluate nominated high performing/high potential Talents to determine whether they had the potential to become ‘Global Talents.’ Grundfos also recognised the need for different types of talent and therefore aimed to classify all Talents into a ‘Talent pool’ as an innovator, specialist or leader.

(http://www.adc.uk.com/resources/library/case-studies/grundfos-talent-centre/)

I am going to list some definitions before discussing the solution Grundfos was offered from the consultant.

Talent pool is a group of workers who are being prepared for vertical or horizontal advancement. (Roth well, WJ 2010, 4th edition, P207)

• Talent pools is one of the characteristics of succession planning and management that makes it superior to replacement planning by creating many backups for a position instead of having one or few ones.

Vertical Advancement: Promotion up the organization chain of command.

• Promotion up the organization needs to focus development on leadership skills, in Grundfos case, vertical advancement would be for the “Leader Talent pool”

Horizontal advancement: enhancement of individual’s competencies so that he or she has a broadened scope of knowledge, skills & abilities in keeping with the organization’s direction or worker’s occupation

• In Grundfos case’, “Innovator & Specialist talent pools” will be subjected to the development to make them ready for horizontal advancement.

Double loop learning: training program designed to prepare an employee for horizontal or vertical advancement by enhancing both leadership & technical skills.

Assessment centre: A process of creating a realistic simulation of the work performed by those target talents, and then run individuals through a process to determine how well they perform in a higher-level or position.

Individual development plans: The process of planning activities that will narrow the gap between what individuals can already do & what they should do to meet future work requirements in one or more key position. ( Rothwell, WJ 2010,4^th edition, P205).

A&DC solution for Grundfos talent management:

-          They designed a talent centre (Assessment centre) for collecting comprehensive data about each talent that is going to be used in assessment and development. The Talent centre measured not only ability but also personality and motivation to provide a holistic picture of each Talent.

-          The Talent centre itself included a number of challenging scenarios and activities such as a presentation, group discussion, analysis exercise and a crisis management exercise, which allowed specific roles to be tested through realistic connected scenarios.

-          Career Success Module prepared Talents for an in depth one-to-one behavioural and psychometric feedback session and the start of a Talent development plan.

As stated on their website “Once a year Management in the companies, in co-operation with HR, evaluate talents. Staff with potentials for taking on a larger amount of responsibility in the course of up to five years, are appointed talents. Management follow the further development of these talents in connection with the annual

Job development interviews.” Those words send a clear message for career aspiration and hold promises of individual development plans.

3.3 Dole food Company

61,000 Workers Company, operating in more than ninety countries.

“ We are looking to execute an organized process where we will identify weaknesses & strengths of our people and build plans to deal with it, we also want to identify areas where we will need to bring in some people from outside to fill some gaps” ( Rothwell, WJ 2010,4^th edition, P378).

Those were the words by which George Horne-Dole’s vice president of administration and support operations- stated the need for a succession planning before the program was started in 2008. Sue Hagen –Vice president of HR for North America operations – was assigned as the responsible for leading the effort to start and implement succession planning.

From the very beginning she was convinced it can’t be done without a software application that could connect all the employee in one network for an efficient succession planning & management program.

How software solution could maximize the benefit of SP& M program?

• A onetime task by one HR person, fed the database for the start of succession planning program after grapping it from payroll system.
• Top Managers access the program from the web with a password, to fill out a resume, including career interest, and note any mobility restrictions. They assess themselves on four core competencies required by dole ( Accountability, business acumen, multifunctionality & vision)
• Assessment goes automatically to the division head, divisional HR director & Hagen.
• Hagen will use the information to create a career development plan for each individual.

“The beauty is for the first time we’ll have database that ties together these talent metrics and can serve as a clearinghouse for people available for opportunities” says Hagen.

( Rothwell, WJ 2010,4^th edition, P381).

4. Conclusion (My Position)

I am strongly in favour of using a systematic process of talent development through applying a succession planning & management program, which will indeed help any organization to achieve strategic goals by having the right people in the right position at the right time to do the right job.

However, defining the right person, is a big dilemma if you don’t have the right tools to do potential assessment and performance appraisal. Furthermore, a right person in a current position isn’t necessarily the right one for a higher position. In other words, you need to assess and develop employee for the future key position competencies, not just to train according to changes in current environment.

Having the right people is not only how to recruit & on board, it is mainly how to retain and keep the talents that would ensure leadership continuity, keeping the institutional memory in your organization. You need to show commitment for your employee development, by creating an individual development plan for the selected talents in a way that would match their career objectives.

A major difference between the two schools of thoughts we are discussing is how the performance management is used, the first -evolutionary school of talent development – use performance management & appraisal as a tool for getting the right person in the right place, however, exemplary performance at one level doesn’t mean a person would meet the expectations at a higher level.

On the other hand, the second school supporting planned talent development uses performance appraisal and potential assessment to draw a road map for individual development plans according to his/her individual competencies, desired competencies for current position and future position he/she could get. In that way they build talent pools where they can find successors for key positions, keep the institutional memory & motivate employees by upward or lateral advancement putting in consideration individual requirements for each candidate career plan. That would be only achieved with an effective succession planning and management program.

Other reasons for starting and implementing succession planning & management program:

• Increasing Talent pool of promotable employees. There is many instead of one or few backups.
• Provide increased opportunities for High-potential workers & improve retention of talented people.
• Improve employee morale, opportunity to gain a promotion can serve as an incentive.
• Making the employee ready for future changes being proactive and not a reactive approach of development.
• Cope with the effects of downsizing, increasing individual competencies to cover more tasks, Keeping the potentials & discarding the failures.
• Providing a way of horizontal advancement for those low potentials with high performance, to keep & manipulate technical talents.

5. References

Text Book:

• Rothwell, WJ 2010, Effective Succession Planning, 4th edn, AMACOM, New York (ISBN: 9780814414163)

Journals:

• Anderson, C 2009, ‘Succession Planning Gains Momentum’, Chief Learning Officer, March, vol.8, iss. 3, pp. 54-56.
• Moskal, W 2008, ‘Planning for Succession’, Baseline, October, iss. 89, pp. 12-14.

Websites:

• http://www.clarkmorgan.com/performance-or-potential/
• http://www.adc.uk.com/resources/library/case-studies/grundfos-talent-centre/
• http://www.bf.umich.edu/docs/KeyReferenceArticles.pdf
• http://www.grundfos.com/content/dam/Global%20Site/About%20us/PDF_Random/grundfos%20facts-29-04-2014.pdf