Making Succession Planning a Success - repost

“How many of you have someone in your store you’d like to train into another position?” asked Deb Snellen at the start of her CAMEX100 session Succession Planning: Start Planning Now for Your Store’s Future. About half the audience raised a hand.

Determining who on your current staff could potentially step up into another position is a critical component of succession planning, however, the tricky part often lies in preparing those employees to assume a bigger role. Some stores may be reluctant to expend time and money on developing employees for an ambiguous promotion that may never happen, acknowledged Snellen, executive director of professional and organizational development and instructor at Lake-Sumter State College in Florida.

“Investing in people can be expensive,” she noted. But the benefits are clear, she added, including avoiding disruption because someone is ready to take over a vacancy immediately, emergency coverage if needed (especially for a smaller store), and, in particular, retaining the best employees “because people can see they have a growth plan.”

Creating a succession plan for essential store positions is one of the new NACS standards approved by the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education last month. Succession planning can mean different things, Snellen said, but the Association for Talent Development (formerly ASTD) defines it this way: A long-term strategic initiative that ensures the right staff are in the right job at the right time.

A succession plan involves one possible scenario for the future. It may never be put into action for a variety of reasons: budget, dictates from above, staff departing, reorganization. But not having a plan leaves the store vulnerable if one or more key positions are vacated.

“One thing to keep in mind, how are you going to communicate this?” Snellen said. Training an employee in preparation for a step up is not a promise they’ll actually get that job. So how do you manage that employee’s expectations?

“My suggestion is you tell people there’s no guarantees. ‘I’m going to help you become the most qualified person for when the time comes, but things may happen,’” she said.

“Some organizations have a policy that any available position has to be posted—no such thing as slotting someone in,” she pointed out. Reminding employees of that policy should be part of the communication.

Snellen said she supports posting all vacancies, even with a succession plan in place. “I think there’s value to that. You know you’ve got the best person,” she explained.

She laid out a four-step succession planning process:

Identify key positions in the store.

List all of the positions and code them according to two factors: the impact on the store if the current employee were to leave and the likelihood of that person quitting. (Position Impact High/Medium/Low and Vacancy Risk High/Medium/Low)

The key positions will be those with both high impact and high vacancy risk.

Identify competencies of positions.

Competencies involve skills, not tasks, such as critical thinking, vision, ability to learn, flexibility, compassion, communication, multi-tasking, and so on. List out the competencies for each job and rate the importance. The top five or six competencies are what you should look for—and help develop—in a possible successor.

Identify current talent.

Size up employees to determine who might have the right stuff to be considered for an eventual promotion. Snellen suggested a couple ways to do that. The Association for Talent Development uses a rating scale to gauge three factors: the employee’s potential, their readiness to move up, and their current performance. You can use either a five-point or 10-point scale.

The other method, which Snellen said is “somewhat controversial,” is a nine-box analysis. Using a three-by-three grid, assess each employee’s potential versus performance on a high/medium/low basis. Employees who are high potential with medium to high performance or medium potential with high performance are the ones to develop. (Some feel this method is too limiting and fails to provide a full picture of the employee’s capabilities.)

Identify development strategies.

After identifying key positions, competencies, and the employees that might fulfill them with the proper preparation, the final step is to create a plan for cultivating those staff members. Snellen said that might involve individual development plans, cross training and professional development, small promotions, scalable talent management strategies, and “you, me, and we” training.

“Don’t think professional development has to be sending them to a conference,” Snellen said. There are many ways to bolster someone’s skills and experience. “You, me, and we” allows for a variety of methods.

“Seventy percent of what we know about doing our work we learn from doing our work and connecting to other people. Twenty percent is from deliberately asking other people. Ten percent you only get from formal learning,” she said.

“We” learning (70%) could include taking part in cross-departmental collaborations or brainstorming sessions, mentoring, job shadowing, projects committees, roundtable discussions, interest groups, problem-solving.

“Me” learning (20%) could involve continuing education and webinars, LinkedIn learning, reading print and online materials, listening to podcasts, volunteering, tackling a project, seeking advice from colleagues or a mentor, self-assessments.

“You” learning (10%) encompasses more structured learning in workshops, seminars, conferences, courses, certificate programs, book talks, association meetings, consortium training, position-specific training.

***

If you want to learn more about succession planning, NACS University will debut a new self-paced course, Succession Planning: Managing Business Continuity,” in January 2024. The course will be available free to NACS members.