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General Information
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July 31, 2009
• Vol.31 Issue 20
Page(s) 30-31 in print issue
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Plan For CIO Succession
Alhough It May Seem Like A Far-Off Concern, It’s Important To Establish A Chain Of Command
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| Key Points
• Succession planning helps individuals acquire experience and leadership skills, leading to more satisfied employees, higher retention rates, and lower recruitment costs. • To ease the succession planning workload, CIOs can treat it as a part of the ongoing employee development process rather than an annual event that requires weeks of preparation. • Automated succession planning and management tools make it easier to identify and manage successors by centralizing information, keeping that information up-to-date, and displaying the effects of movement within the organization. | | For many CIOs, identifying, mentoring, and managing a successor is a long-term project that’s put off due to the pressures of short-term issues and other tasks. The succession planning process requires collaboration with other departments, such as HR, and it calls for CIOs to consider future needs along with grooming someone to replace them, which can be a bit uncomfortable in today’s unpredictable IT environment.
In its second CIO succession trend survey, CDW found that the majority of CIOs do not have a succession plan in place. “Despite the important role of CIOs in overall business strategy, many corporations are unprepared for CIO succession,” says Mark Gambill, market insight professional at CDW. “According to the CDW data, almost half (49%) of CIOs spend more time on business strategy than IT issues. However, only 39% of IT decision makers across corporate and government sectors say their organizations have a formal CIO succession plan in place.”
Not having a succession plan can lead to an ad-hoc, reactionary solution when a CIO leaves the company. Poor succession planning places the enterprise at risk due to disruption, lack of direction, and loss of institutional knowledge. To ease the succession planning process, CIOs can roll it into overall employee development. This helps individuals acquire experience and leadership skills while benefiting the organization and leading to more satisfied employees and higher retention rates.
 A Succession Management Road Map
According to APQC (www.apqc.org), a nonprofit benchmarking and best practices research firm, succession management “involves identifying and monitoring existing talent pools to continuously meet the needs of an organization. It encompasses many of the systems and processes traditionally performed by human resources, but it is a more comprehensive approach to ensuring that the right talent is prepared and in the right place.”
Although each organization is unique, best practices for succession planning generally include defining roles, analyzing needs, identifying and developing talent, and evaluating the effectiveness of the process. Succession planning can leverage employee data that you already have in place, such as performance evaluations and core competencies.
In its booklet Passport to Success Series: Succession Management, A Guide For Your Journey To Best Practice Processes, APQC recommends the following steps and best practices for implementing succession management:
Initiate a succession management effort. This step lays the foundation for succession management by identifying the roles of HR, senior management, and employees. It also connects the effort to ongoing business strategies and organizational goals.
Perform a needs analysis. To determine the succession plan, you must identify the talent and skills required for the position. For example, a CIO position might require a combination of IT, policy, legal, and business expertise, in addition to leadership qualities. The analysis should consider the current and future strategies of the organization as a whole and the IT department itself.
Identify talent. By defining competencies that relate to the needs assessment, you can evaluate and classify employees. For example, success factors for leaders might include priority setting, problem solving, and drive for results. You can also include performance evaluations to help identify high-potential employees.
Engage and develop talent. Organizations should link employee and leadership development to the current and future needs of the business. You can do so by involving HR and tying development to strategic planning. Ideally, development should start early on in an employee’s career.
Focus on developing leaders. To develop and engage future leaders, you can use mentoring, coaching, job rotation, and formalized feedback. However, job assignment and experience are sometimes most important.
Retain talent. You can encourage employees to get involved in the performance evaluation process by ensuring ownership lies with employees and managers, not HR. When employees initiate the appraisal process, they build commitment to the organization and are more motivated.
Gauge success of succession management efforts. You should evaluate both the overall process and the individual components, such as developing talent and identifying high-potential employees. Rather than focusing on measures such as ROI, evaluate areas that relate directly to your efforts, such as employee satisfaction and turnover rates.
Consider Automation
CIO succession planning seems to be more challenging for small and midsized enterprises. “Large businesses are more likely to have formal CIO succession plans in place,” says Gambill. “According to the CDW data, 63% of large businesses have succession plans compared to 46% of medium-sized businesses and 15% of small businesses.”
For companies of all sizes, automation can help ease the burden and make succession planning part of the ongoing employee development process. Automated tools make it easier to identify and manage talent. Some tools are part of a larger, integrated employee management system, while others are standalone systems that may or may not interoperate with other HR-related products.
“With automation, succession can be happening all the time, rather than a laborious event that happens once,” says David Karel, vice president of product marketing at SuccessFactors (www.successfactors.com), a performance and talent management software company. “You’re always thinking about leadership pathing and career pathing; you always have the latest information at your fingertips. You can really look holistically at whether you have the talent to support your strategy.”
Paper data becomes outdated almost immediately. With automated tools, data can be updated and centralized. “You can look at up-to-date information, manipulate and search the data, and look at it with a team,” says Karel. “As you identify a set of successors, you can then do career and development planning and management. You can also create a development plan on our system and map it to the right learning content.”
Succession management software can help identify key people that could potentially fill a role. If it’s integrated with other HR talent management tools, you have already captured a lot of process content such as performance ratings, compensation history, manager-generated information, and core competencies. Automated tools can also make it easier to see the bigger picture of talent management and employee roles. “With [an] organization chart interface, you can see succession readiness levels, and you can see the downstream implications of your decisions,” says Karel.
By implementing succession planning, CIOs can identify and manage talent, develop staff, and gain more satisfied employees that are less likely to leave for greener pastures.  by Carmen Carmack
Top Tips
• Leverage HR information you already have to help identify, manage, and develop successors. Make succession planning a part of the overall employee development process. • According to research firm Gartner, focusing on people—during both uptimes and downtimes—means preparing for changes to professional profiles and preparing for effective talent management processes. • If your organization does not have the talent you need, now is the time to recruit high-potential individuals. |
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