Most interviewing cycles have several phases.  A typical one would have you go through a screening interview with someone in HR, followed by a more in depth interview with the hiring manager, and then possibly talking to his or her boss, followed by conversations with other specialists in the company.  The interviewer in each scenario will have a series of questions that you will, of course, need to be prepared for, but I find that the best candidates distinguish themselves when they prepare questions to ask me.  It is particularly effective if they can introduce some idea of a process or methodology that could help me or my company.   As a tip, next time you’re at this point in an interview try asking “What qualities do you or your company look for when evaluating high potential employees?”

The chances are that the hiring manager will struggle a little to answer that question, and that’s your opening.  If there is a board somewhere, ask permission and go draw a nine-box on it demonstrating how you use the tool to evaluate yourself.  The manager may have heard of a nine-box, but it is likely he or she never used it with any regularity.  This gives you the chance to visually paint a flattering picture of yourself while introducing a useful scoring tool to the manager to run his organization.  I can almost guarantee that he or she will remember you after the interview.

The reason the nine-box is effective is that strong leaders tend to be more visual than oral, so any chance you get to leave an imprint on their mind will likely leave you with a leg up on the competition.   Good hunting!

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.

Another use of the traditional potential by performance 9 box view is during bonus assignments and raise awards. This has increased management’s satisfaction with the compensation process.  The managers feel better about the fairness and the distribution of funds, when they can visualize the value distribution of their key players.

A workforce analyst is diagnosing risk for retirement pain points by reviewing age by tenure on the matrix.  When you need to see comparative details to a group of people, the visualization of the distribution is very powerful and makes the data very easy to understand.

The 9-box is powerful and its power is magnified when you can compare, side by side, the individuals in any area of the 9 box or select individuals.  Multiply the power again when you can transfer the visualization of the 9 box content in a color coded map in the org chart.  NOW, you have the power to see the applicable information in the context of the hierarchy structure of the organization and the information has real meaning.

Your planning is stronger.  Your decision making is more confident.  Your processes have a reduction in risk, when you can really see the information you need in an impactful view.  So to really deliver value to your management, I ask…What’s in your 9-box?

Cheers,

Lois

But besides all the rabbit holes we could go down for that specific topic, let’s talk about the needs for succession planning.  Do you think that 6 months ago BP thought they would be discussing the replacement of their CEO this summer?  Do you think that there is only one person being replaced at BP? – NOT  What about the people that specifically managed the work around regulations to avoid building a relief well?  I would bet these less visible positions will be turning over quickly too.

Any given high level position change is likely to target 2 – 6 more moves or hires within the organization.  Each person that get moved up, leaves a position that needs to be filled.  New people in new positions, whether hired from the outside or promoted from a succession plan is going to consider their new team and evaluate if they want to make changes.  This creates another cascade affect.  Companies need to be prepared for this dynamic. Staffing changes ALL THE TIME!  Critical roles cannot be left unfilled for very long, regardless of the reason they were made empty.  What are you doing to either…

1)help prepare your organization deal with the trickle effect of replacing people throughout your company

or

2)make sure you are qualified and willing to step up to new responsibilities in the organization when opportunities arrive.

Look at the steps for succession planning (these are very high level, there is much more to the process, but these  will get you started.

Know that when a decision goes wrong, there may be ramifications up and down the chain of command.  Succession Planning is not just for the c-suite.  Are you watching the trends of your organization to see where the highest turnover is taking place?  Could you change those turnover trends by doing a better job of succession planning?  Are your people being developed so that when they are needed to fill another position? Are they are trained and familiar with the teams and processes in the department?  Are you measuring which leaders are preparing your future executives by promoting them and providing career and project mobility?

These are critical questions to be asking of your organization and putting systems in place to make all of this information visible and the plans executable.  What are you doing to make sure you are contributing to the stability and growth of the organization?  You think that might be a hot seat today.  It is a much cooler seat then it will be when there is a crises for replacements raises its head, so step up.

Cheers,

Lois

Succession planning discussions aren’t limited to HR industry magazines and websites anymore – just Google search “Yankees succession plan” and you’ll get a host of hits from a wide range of sources. Clearly this is more than just buzz – it’s top of mind in the business community, as I believe it should be. A sound succession plan keeps organizations on the path to success.

So why do we hesitate to create that crucial blueprint? Confusion? Dread? Lack of resources and tools? Too many of us get bogged down in the concept of managing the process instead of focusing on the plan itself.

This is a subject that I’ve been tackling head on lately. So, I thought I’d put all of our recent succession planning resources here. I hope you enjoy!

The Fort Worth Business Press recently published my article Succession Planning Needed to Safeguard Future that addresses solutions to the roadblocks many organizations throw in the way of succession planning.

I also blogged about it – Five Succession Planning Steps: Don’t make it harder than it is!, It must have struck a chord, because that entry was picked up and reposted on the Entrepreneurs’ Organization website – a group of more than 7,300 business owners in 42 countries dedicated to sharing business and leadership knowledge.

So now Aquire has developed another resource to help break down the process into manageable steps: Safeguard the Future with Succession Planning – a short presentation that breaks down the process into five easy steps. It’s free to watch on demand with no registration required. What’s holding you back from succession planning? I’d love to know!

Cheers,

Lois

Any business that does not have succession plans for the replacement of key employees is ignoring a serious element of their risk mitigation planning. A gap in the leadership presents so many risks. Least of them is the possibility that key strategies will go astray when there’s no leadership plan to assure business continuity.

We often find the scary part preventing businesses from performing proper talent reviews and building the model for succession plans is they’re afraid that the process of building the successor map also requires them to dive into dozens of other processes they don’t know how to do. Now, with easy tools like Aquire’s OrgPublisher Succession, you can dispel those fears. OrgPublisher Succession is direct and user friendly, providing side-by-side comparisons of potential successors, as well as powerful searching and filters that can align people into the 9 box comparison most commonly used for potential and performance analysis. You CAN get managers to participate in the succession planning of key employees if you help them keep it simple.

The Talent Strategy Group and its book One Page Talent Management also help businesses realize they can create succession plans and simplify the process. Businesses must build their replacement plan strategy and map their talent. When successors are built and chosen from within, employees realize there is a career path possibility for them. When shareholders understand that the business is planning for the movement of talent and has built the path for successors, they are more confident in investing in the organization. Without these plans in place your business is at risk of faltering in so many places.

My Mom used to tell us, “you can’t start any younger, so start today.” She was a wise woman.

Cheers,
Lois

So, for this round of hiring, we’re now using the 9-Box matrix, from our own Succession Planning software, to plot candidates. The traditional axes of the 9-Box are Performance and Potential. That, at least in Succession Planning best practices, is the way to find the candidates most suited for moving up the corporate ladder.

Using the 9 Box for hiring takes a little different approach, but our software can still handle the requirements. In this hiring situation, I can plot potential for leadership on one axis and cultural fit on the other, then rank the candidates in their various groupings. A technical manager is also using the 9 Box for their hiring, plotting skills matches on one axis and cultural fit on another. The potential is limitless, and brings the focus of the hiring manager onto the top two most important factors they consider for hiring.

The screening recruiter can first plot the candidates prior to the manager’s interviews, and then the manager can reorganize and re-rank people after the interviews. There are many, many choices involved in the hiring process. We have found this to be one great way to get a laser-focus and common communication schema in front of all decision makers during the hiring process.

Our customers are the buyers of HR technology and business workforce analytics software. They’re hyper-aware of their vendors because they, themselves, are in the people business. We provide great customer service, and our customers deserve it. Only the best candidates can make the cut. So, I’m glad we can use our very own Succession Planning software in a new way. It definitely increases our ROI.

Cheers,
Lois

A review of The 30-Minute Guide to Talent and Succession Management, by Doris Sims

Talent and succession management may be unfamiliar ideas to many business leaders, but when they are likened to more recognizable business concepts – like financial budgeting and sales pipelines – they not only quickly become clear, but clearly necessary. The 30-Minute Guide to Talent and Succession Management by Doris Sims does exactly this; concisely demonstrating how important and easy it is for every organization to create and maintain talent and succession management plans. And, yes, it really can be read in about half an hour. 

The book is surprisingly comprehensive for its relative brevity, covering everything from basic definitions of talent, succession and performance management, to teaching how to identify top talent, to demonstrating the use of assessment tools like the elegantly simple 9-Box Chart. Throughout, Sims reinforces her forward-thinking philosophy that organizational success depends just as much on the development and retention of top talent as it does on good financial planning. In Sims’ own words:

“If you are able to identify and retain top talent, and provide an environment that fosters engagement and productivity, EVERYTHING else you are striving to achieve for your organization will naturally follow.”

The beauty of this book is that it not only provides an easy-to-follow roadmap for achieving this organizational ideal, but also a compelling case for business leaders to start viewing talent management as the equal of established business processes like new product development, advertising, mergers and acquisitions, etc. After all, who better to develop better products, advertise company services, and navigate change than an organization full of loyal and efficient top talent? Likewise, as Sims points out, talent management is a lot like risk management: a process that analyzes data, helps make informed decisions, and reduces risk – in this case, the risk of leadership vacancy, which can seriously damage an organization’s momentum.

Even though the book can be read in just 30 minutes, it still manages to serve as a comprehensive desk reference with straightforward indexing of key points. In addition, good use of graphics and charts throughout the book not only reinforce the concepts described, but could also easily serve as basic implementation models.

Kind Regards,
Candi Varisco

The information provided in this recent article, Plan For CIO Succession, in this week’s issue of Processor® , is very valid for many positions.

As is so often demonstrated, the talents of the executives must be a blend of many competencies. Identify the skills you want to see in your organization’s leadership and then track them for each possible candidate, better yet, for all employees. Ideally, executives must be able to balance their strengths at:

• leadership
• coaching/teamwork
• functional experience
• cross-functional awareness
• innovation
• strategy
• global understanding
• customer focus

A great technician does not necessarily make a great CIO. As the article points out, there is often more strategy involved in the job than technical work. However, in my experience, in order to build strategy about technology, practical experience with technology is also needed. A CIO with little or no “in the trenches” technology experience will find it much harder to do their job and nearly impossible to gain a following as a leader of technology resources.

So how do you get a CIO (or a head of sales, or marketing, or finance)? The simple answer: You must mentor and develop them.

The concept is the same for all positions, the execution of the development may vary. After you identify possible executive candidates, they need to be involved in strategic discussions and decisions, as well as budgeting and relations with other business units as a portion of their jobs. To develop a cohesive succession plan, you must analyze and groom many people then test their abilities to assist in many capacities of the business at hand. This is how you will know who is ready to succeed a leader.

Cheers,
Lois

But now I’ve found my current succession planning winner for using the traditional high potential and high performance axis. A company realized that so few managers were willing to put their employees in a low potential column, especially if they were good employees or high performers. The company knew they had a problem. So they changed the labels.

During the next review process they changed the “Low” potential label to “Well Placed.” They changed the “Medium” potential label to “Expandable.” They left the “High Potential” label as “High.” Managers were then much more willing to place people honestly without feeling the ranking was degrading. Many more employees moved to squares further left in the grid.

In the sample below, the new labels are shown on the bottom axis circled in red.

That is an ingenious work-around of existing tools to get the results you need. Will you try it? Do you have tips on 9-Box usage? I’d love to see them.

Cheers,
Lois