What has the succession department and teams looked like at BP for the last few months?  I am sure they have been busy and they were not proactive, it has been excruciating painful to live in  their shoes.  It was apparent early on that the public would want to see somebody at BP personally pay for the gulf disaster and as Hayward became a repeat offender of the ‘foot in mouth award’, it became obvious that no matter how well he runs the company, he was going to go.

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. read more »

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! read more »

Fill Open Position

A lot of companies struggle with identifying critical positions. They choose to flag these critical roles so succession plans can be created to fill the slots should they become vacant positions. Sometimes, it is a political issue within a company as to which positions are critical. An individual of great value or of sensitive ego may feel threatened if their position is not defined as critical.  read more »

I know I’ve been writing a lot about Succession Planning lately, but this business discipline is in need of serious management and strategic attention and  re-creation. I found this article, Opening Up Succession Plans, about Frontier Communications’  succession planning particularly interesting.

I’ll let you read it and then I’ll ask a question…”Are you a CEO  afraid to build out your succession plan because it’s planning your own funeral?” I have at least two pieces of advice for you. read more »

Business decisions, small and large, have far-reaching impact on businesses and the people working within them. Thus, executives and managers are seeking more fact-based decision tools. Yet, in this age of data overload, large numbers of facts can  paralyze the decision makers. How can they wade through the data to make it meaningful? Here comes the responsibility of the technology departments. read more »