Well how do you like that?  The British Commonwealth countries have now decided it is okay to break tradition and make new laws that allow succession plans to transfer females, even if they have a little brother.  More detail here .  Yes, royalty have a different world to live by, but I have heard some pretty lame excuses for corporations to keep old outdated methods and traditions when it comes to their employee processes.  And they are not all just related to succession planning.  I thought I would create a list of the some of the really stupid decisions or policies that we see.  If you don’t want your co-workers, peers or executives to roll their eyes and scoff at your ancient processes, get rid of these 7 succession policies NOW!

Awful Policy 1: Only Allowing Planners to Select Successors from the chain of command under a position

Successors should be the best candidates for the role regardless of the current department or position they hold in a company.

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Carnival of HR has asked all contributors to develop a list of 7 in honor of September being the word for 7^th.  (Greek calendar had September as the 7^th month)

Seven ways to get included on the corporate succession plan.  There are many things that get evaluated by management and talent management teams when they are doing succession planning.  As I  observe succession plans I see the desired requirements for the planners.  However there are often gaps between the planners needs and the candidates focus on what they should be developing about themselves.  For many people these may be obvious, but for others I hope it will help them think about the things they do to develop and promote themselves.  There are, of course, specific skills required for different roles and career paths.  This list is more about the universal traits.

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Much of Talent Management can be summed up by paraphrasing Jim Collins in “Good To Great”.  It’s about getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats on the bus. It is paramount that you build the right paths for your talent pool to ensure that critical roles in the company stay filled and filled with the right people. Here are two  key metrics to help you get there:

Successor Pool Coverage:  How deep is your bench for critical roles? This is not just for succession planning in the highest levels of management.  This is about replacement planning throughout the organization.   read more »

Job hunting is rarely a fun experience, but it is even less so in a trying economy where unemployment is hovering near 10%.   If you read the papers and watch the news you hear that jobs are out there, but those out of work often do not have the skill sets that these open positions require.  So, the question for a job seeker is how do you gain, and more importantly portray, that you have these skills to a potential employer? read more »

A Nine-Box matrix is typically used in succession planning to plot the potential of an employee to move up in the organization on one axis and performance ratings on the other axis.  This allows you to compare, contrast, and desk check that you are considering as many individuals as possible for succession plans.

But, why should we stop there?  Aquire is implementing some great creative usage in the 9 box to help solve many business and talent-driven decisions.  I bet you would love to see performance rating on one axis and the scale of salary or raise % within a 9 box.  It allows people to fall directly into the 9 box and you can see the outliers during your bonus planning.  It is very powerful. read more »