Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing internal people with the potential to fill key business

leadership positions in the company. Succession planning increases the availability of experienced and capable employees that are prepared to assume these roles as they become available. Taken narrowly, "replacement planning" for key roles is the heart of succession planning. Effective succession or talent-pool management concerns itself with building a series of feeder groups up and down the entire leadership pipeline or progression (Charan, Drotter, Noel, 2001). In contrast, replacement planning is focused narrowly on identifying specific back-up candidates for given senior management positions. For the most part position-driven replacement planning (often referred to as the "truck scenario") is a forecast, which research indicates does not have substantial impact on outcomes. Fundamental to the succession-management process is an underlying philosophy that argues that top talent in the corporation must be managed for the greater good of the enterprise. Merck and other companies argue that a "talent mindset" must be part of the leadership culture for these practices to be effective. companies that report the greatest gains from succession planning feature high ownership by the CEO and high degrees of engagement among the larger leadership team [1] Companies that are well known for their succession planning and executive talent development practices include: GE, Honeywell, IBM, Marriott, Microsoft, Pepsi and Procter & Gamble. Research indicates that clear objectives are critical to establishing effective succession planning.[2] These objectives tend to be core to many or most companies that have wellestablished practices:

Identify those with the potential to assume greater responsibility in the organization Provide critical development experiences to those that can move into key roles Engage the leadership in supporting the development of high-potential leaders Build a data base that can be used to make better staffing decisions for key jobs

In other companies these additional objectives may be embedded in the succession process:

Improve employee commitment and retention Meet the career development expectations of existing employees Counter the increasing difficulty and costs of recruiting employees externally

Companies devise elaborate models to characterize their succession and development practices. Most reflect a cyclical series of activities that include these fundamentals:

Identify key roles for succession or replacement planning Define the competencies and motivational profile required to undertake those roles Assess people against these criteria - with a future orientation Identify pools of talent that could potentially fill and perform highly in key roles Develop employees to be ready for advancement into key roles - primarily through the right set of experiences.

In many companies, over the past several years, the emphasis has shifted from planning job assignments to development, with much greater focus on managing key experiences that are critical to growing global business leaders. North American companies tend to be more active in this regard, followed by European and Latin American countries.

PepsiCo, IBM and Nike are current examples of the so-called "game planning" approach to succession and talent management. In these and other companies annual reviews are supplemented with an ongoing series of discussions among senior leaders about who is ready to assume larger roles. Vacancies are anticipated and slates of names are prepared based on highest potential and readiness for job moves. Organization realignments are viewed as critical windows of opportunity to create development moves that will serve the greater good of the enterprise. Assessment is a key practice in effective succession planning. There is no widely accepted formula for evaluating the future potential of leaders, but there are many tools and approaches that continue to be used today, ranging from personality and cognitive testing to team-based interviewing and simulations and other assessment center methods. Elliott Jaques and others have argued for the importance of focusing assessments narrowly on critical differentiators of future performance. Jaques developed a persuasive case for measuring candidates' ability to manage complexity, formulating a robust operational definition of business intelligence.[4] The Cognitive Process Profile (CPP) psychometric is an example of a tool used in succession planning to measure candidates' ability to manage complexity according to Jaques' definition. Companies struggle to find practices that are effective and practical. It is clear leaders who rely on instinct and gut to make promotion decisions are often not effective. Research indicates that the most valid practices for assessment are those that involve multiple methods and especially multiple raters [5] "Calibration meetings," composed of senior leaders can be quite effective judging a slate of potential senior leaders with the right tools and facilitation. With organisations facing increasing complexity and uncertainty in their operating environments some suggest a move away from competence based approaches.[6] In a future that is increasingly hard to predict leaders will need to see opportunity in volatility, spot patterns in complexity, find creative solutions to problems, keep in mind long term strategic goals for the organisation and wider society, and hold onto uncertainty until the optimum time to make a decision. .