as easy as... framing

In the early years of my experience with talent mapping, I once sat in an empty conference room waiting for various executive leaders to arrive. The wall map was up, my notes were in order, and Post-it notes were at the ready. 

This particular meeting was intended to map (assess, rate, and label) managers. My HR partners had scheduled directors to join the executive team at set intervals, one at a time, to present their information for each manager in their division. I was still relatively new to the process, still treating the work as a facilitation assignment–not yet understanding that there were opportunities to improve processes, coach leaders, and, even sometimes, influence culture. After all, this is how they had always done it.

I was busy rearranging a line of sticky notes with carefully penned names when the first director arrived. She was early and we were alone. She took her seat, took and released a deep sigh, and then said, "Well. I'm retiring soon. What are you going to do about my replacement?”

This is a core memory for me, professionally. My inside voice had... thoughts. (Well. I’m not doing anything. What are you doing, ma'am?) My outside voice was polite and helpful, spouting something about support and established processes. Obviously, this has stayed with me, and I now think there are several lessons to glean from this moment.

The first lesson is to understand that enshrining "The Map" will inevitably put the focus on the event rather than the process it exists to support. This is one of the fundamental problems I have with the 9-box approach. Companies put so much time and effort each year into preparing a complete map (another common term for the documentation associated with the 9-box grid) that it takes center stage. This is a phenomenon called “surrogation,” where the tool or metric takes the place of the thing it's intended to measure. 

My “What are you doing about my replacement?” story is a stark illustration of this. For this leader (who was not alone in her attitude), the mapping event was the work–not the ongoing effort to identify and replace her successor. What we want to hear from leaders in these circumstances is, “I'll be retiring next year, and here is what I've been doing to prepare the employees who are interested and good candidates to replace me.” No map. Just a clear process and ownership of a business priority.

Leaders can address this by creating distinct measures of success for the talent and succession planning program. For example, the retention rates for employees in the succession pipeline, the number of identified successors who actually promote into the vacant role, or the time it takes a successor to acclimate to the new job once they have replaced their predecessor. Metrics like these point your attention to what the mapping effort is really there to accomplish: Identifying and preparing future leaders.

We also see that without support and accountability, leaders will become passive observers in succession planning, rather than being the source of power that drives its success. Passivity here points to a lack of accountability. When leaders look outside themselves for the solution to succession needs, it's a sign that they don't know what's expected of them.

This is a pervasive problem that extends beyond succession planning. Training and development for managers has been on the decline for years, despite the role it plays in well-being, confidence, performance, employee engagement, and other individual and workplace success factors. Personally, I think this actually gets worse the higher we go in an organization. New managers don’t receive adequate training, only to be promoted to senior roles and eventually C-suite positions with no additional development support. The unfortunate attitude is “They should just know.” Well, if no one tells them, how will they know?

The solution here can be extensive. For example (and in a perfect world), organizations can provide comprehensive leadership training that begins before an individual even enters leadership, taking the time and investment to embed leadership skills across all levels and functions. This is the long game for successful talent development. But we can also address the need with one simple step: Regular communication about the individual leader’s role in succession planning. If your organization has a talent mapping “season,” start the process with information about what leaders are responsible for and accountable to do. Take it one step further and make job aids available for the mapping process and establish accountability for employee development with job descriptions and individual goals.  

When accountability exists, it becomes obvious, logical even, that succession planning can start years before the need for a new leader arises. My opinion? Every leader should begin forecasting their replacement plan after their first year in the role. Take that first year to orient and establish yourself and then turn your attention to what it could look like if you promote to a new position or choose to retire or leave. You may intend to stay in the job for years, but it’s never too soon to consider what your current team members would need to know and learn in order to replace you. 

Of course, this assumes that a one-to-one replacement is the right approach. Another lesson for us is that succession planning actually creates the opportunity to not name a successor. Just as we don’t want leaders to be passive in the process, the organization should have a philosophy for talent planning that expects discernment and careful choice-making. It also starts with examining organizational needs, rather than individual traits, histories, or preferences. This is a common mistake: designing future roles and work plans based on current employees. 

In my example, before determining who could replace the director, there should be a discussion about her role and what the business requires for the successful operation of that division going forward. We need to understand and question the possibilities.

• Is there another leader who could add it to their current responsibilities?

• Does the role need different experience or training now than when she started?

• How has the function evolved during her tenure?

• What future external pressures might impact how this role functions within the company?

Questions like these are essential to any succession plan. Because the ultimate plan may be to not name a successor, but to reimagine how the work gets done and by whom. 

Leaders can partner with organizational development or human resources for guidance in this process and to explore ways to innovate or redesign roles, workflows, and departments. Arguably, this is a best practice anytime you face a vacant position, whether it’s a leadership or individual contributor role. Even in cases where a straightforward replacement is the best choice, the assessment and exploration of alternatives serves as groundwork for future plans and builds your understanding of the business.

Successful talent planning involves conducting regular assessments of current and future needs. This is commonly called a “needs assessment.” Done well, it involves a blend of forecasting (future possibilities) and evaluation (past performance), as well as intentional engagement with a variety of stakeholders, balanced by objective research of outside trends and practices. 

The good news? It is a scalable activity. Whether considering individual roles or broader organizational needs, the assessment can follow the same steps and principles. A needs assessment can be quite straightforward or very involved and nuanced, depending on the complexity of the organization or circumstances involved. Because of this, it can be tempting to skip over the needs assessment and head straight to planning. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve been tempted to hop past it and dive right into the fun part, the development and learning aspects of talent planning. 

One of my goals in creating an alternative to current talent planning approaches is to make factors like scalability as easy as possible for everyone involved. I’m also concerned with creating a simple mental model to help leaders and other parties grasp the concepts quickly. This is why, as part of my ongoing research for this work, I’m listening to podcasts about beekeeping these days. One show devoted several episodes to hive types. 

What I know about beehives dates back to the college art degree I mentioned in my last article. When I imagine a beekeeper’s hive, I picture what looks like a stack of white boxes. You may have a similar image in your head. Depending on their size and purpose, those boxes are sometimes called “honey supers” or “hive bodies.” If you were to lift the lid of the topmost box, you would find frames filled with honeycomb. When a beekeeper establishes a new hive, before introducing bees to their new home, the frames hold a foundation layer of patterned wax. The foundation suspended in these frames makes the bees’ job easy. “Build here,” it says. This is how frames provide structure that encourages bees to create their colony. We need similar support for succession planning efforts, a tool for needs assessments and evaluating individual successor candidates. Frames, as a concept and as a program component, will allow us to build straightforward, effective plans.

In the coming weeks, I’ll continue to expand on this and begin sharing methods and tools to support this first aspect of the Hive/Cell program I introduced in my last article. 

To refresh, here are the elements that are currently on my list of important components for sustainable and effective succession planning. What might be missing? Which element do you think is the most important?

1 | Organizational Needs: Understanding current skill gaps and future performance needs.

2 | Individual Capacity: Assessing performance, interest, and other key aspects of employees’ present and future ability to grow with the company.

3 | Organizational Learning: Ensuring robust and sufficient support exists for learning and development needs, including components beyond training and education, such as psychological safety and growth mindsets.

4 | Individual Learning: Encouraging, enabling, and even incenting learning at the employee level, with flexibility for customization and individualization.

5 | Organizational Paths: Articulating and establishing career pathways and connecting current roles to future possibilities, to include ongoing communication about strategic and mission alignment.

6 | Individual Plans: Providing resources and support for accountable developmental planning and growth for all employees.