Business Succession Planning For Dummies E-Book

Arnold Dahlke

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 354

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The fast and easy way to get a handle on business succession planning

While the demand for effective managers continues to grow, the retirement of baby boomers is producing a sharp decline in the ranks of available management personnel. In addition, the executives of the future are expected to be more sophisticated in order to develop and lead new global and technological initiatives. For these reasons, strategic and often long-sighted succession planning for the eventual replacement of managers at all levels has reached a critical level.

Business Succession Planning For Dummies aids managers, human resource professionals, and upper management in cultivating and retaining their existing employees to ensure the availability and capability of persons to assume leadership roles in the future. In plain English, it prepares business owners to ask the difficult questions when it comes to developing a working succession plan for their businesses key positions. This book also offers information on how to retain and train personnel within an organization so that a more seamless transition can be made when a senior leader or other important personnel retires or leaves the organization.

• How to retain and train personnel for a more seamless transition
• Easy-to-follow guidance on developing a working succession plan
• Tips to create a plan to save time, money, knowledge, and clients by hiring from within

If you're a manager or human resources professional looking to develop a working succession plan, this hands-on, friendly guide has you covered.

Leseprobe

Business Succession Planning For Dummies®

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/businesssuccessionplanning to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: What Is a Succession Plan, and Why Do You Need One?

Part II: Creating a Plan and Putting It into Action

Part III: Diving Deeper into Succession Planning

Part IV: Keeping the Succession Ball Rolling

Part V: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: What Is a Succession Plan, and Why Do You Need One?

Chapter 1: Sowing the Seeds for Long-Term Success

Why You Need Succession Planning

What happens when you don’t have a succession plan

What a succession plan can do for you

What Makes a Succession Plan Successful

The key characteristics of a successful succession plan

How succession plans vary in different types of organizations

Responding to different needs

How to Establish Your Succession Plan

Developing the plan

Implementing the plan

Dealing with implementation problems

Monitoring and evaluating the success of your plan

Chapter 2: Why Succession Planning Matters

Ensuring the Continuation of Competent Leadership

Top leadership

Key leadership at other levels

Retaining Highly Competent Employees

Guarding against the loss of key talent

Improving competencies throughout your organization

Providing employee development

Offering advancement opportunities

Reaping the benefits of a competency-driven culture

Keeping Up with 21st-Century Trends

Globalization

The Internet information explosion

Social media

Workforce changes

Recognizing the Consequences of Not Having a Succession Plan

Chapter 3: Pinpointing the Right Type of Plan for Your Organization

Expecting the Unexpected

Laying the Groundwork for Planned Transitions

CEOs or other key leaders

Family business owners or organization founders

Board members

Strategically Mapping Your Organization’s Future

Meeting your current strategic needs

Planning for your future strategic needs

Changing your strategic plan

Part II: Creating a Plan and Putting It into Action

Chapter 4: Preparing the Plan: Six Steps to Success(ion)

Step 1: Figuring Out What Type of Plan You Need

Are you facing unexpected departures?

Are you thinking about planned departures?

Are you thinking strategically?

Step 2: Forming Your Planning Team

Selecting the right team members

Establishing an effective team climate

Figuring out who does what

Step 3: Determining What Factors Will Influence Your Plan

Trends in the marketplace

Changes in talent pools

Generational and cultural diversity

Step 4: Linking Your Succession Plan to Your Strategic Plan

Aligning the succession plan to your vision, mission, and strategies

Partnering with HR

Identifying positions that need to be filled

Step 5: Identifying Potential Candidate Sources

Identifying needed competencies

Developing a list of internal potentials

Compiling external sources of talent

Training to develop needed talent

Step 6: Putting It All Together

Establishing your goals

Describing the process steps

Specifying a timeline

Communicating the plan

Now What?

Chapter 5: Implementing the Plan

Collecting Baseline Data

Starting Off on the Right Foot

Circulating a formal version of your plan

Preparing presentations

Garnering Broad Support for Your Plan

Meeting Challenges Head On

Recruiting external talent

Recruiting internal talent

Making a decision

Monitoring and adjusting as you go

Learning from Your Mistakes

Chapter 6: Evaluating the Plan’s Implementation

Phase 1: Identifying the Criteria for Measuring Success

Stating your plan’s goals

Translating your goals into specific outcomes

Developing measures of success

Phase 2: Determining the Types of Data You Need

Yes or no: Non-metric data

Metric data

Qualitative data

Phase 3: Monitoring Your Plan and Collecting Data

Phase 4: Sifting Through the Data

Phase 5: Making Recommendations

Chapter 7: Overcoming Obstacles in Implementing Your Plan

Anticipating Obstacles and Preparing to Deal with Them

Pushing Past Planning Obstacles

When your planning team doesn’t play well together

When your succession plan conflicts with your overall strategic plan

When you don’t have a supportive planning environment

Jumping the Obstacles People Put Up

When your CEO is the problem

When other people are standing in your way

When skepticism reigns

Solving Process Problems

Time

Design

Accountability

Staying on Task

When you’re having trouble with analysis

When you’re not finding the right people for the job

When developing people within your organization isn’t a cakewalk

When you can’t make up your mind

When you’ve found the right person but hiring hurts

Part III: Diving Deeper into Succession Planning

Chapter 8: Covering Key Positions in Your Succession Plan

Leadership Positions: Where You Lead, I Will Follow

CEOs

Top management

Key managers

Other key positions

Looking Ahead: Fine-Tuning Your Plan for the Future

Anticipating changes in the marketplace

Keeping up with your strategic plan

Making Sure Your Plan Meets Your Organization’s Unique Needs

Chapter 9: Figuring Out What You Need in a Successor

What Are We Really Talking About When We Talk About Competencies?

Talents

Aptitudes

Skills

Knowledge

Assessing Current Competencies

Step 1: Identify job information resources

Step 2: Collect data

Step 3: Organize the data as you collect it

Step 4: Develop interviewing guidelines for recognizing candidate competencies

Step 5: Develop rating scales to use when interviewing a candidate

Looking At Competencies for Key Positions

Top leadership competencies

Competencies for other key positions

Determining Future Competencies

Chapter 10: Identifying and Developing Successors within Your Organization

Creating a Competency Culture

Developing Current Employees’ Competencies

Identifying potential successors

Creating individual development plans

Providing in-house training

Coaching and mentoring people

Giving special assignments

Sending employees to professional association meetings

Encouraging employees to go back to school

Reinforcing Your Competency Culture

Chapter 11: Aiming for a Smooth Transition

Making a New Hire Feel at Home

Handling Successions in Specific Types of Organizations

Large for-profit organizations

Nonprofit organizations

Small businesses

Educational institutions

Governmental organizations

Dealing with Internal Dynamics

Helping managers develop an empowering culture

Creating a problem-solving mindset

Promoting teamwork

Building a climate of trust

Part IV: Keeping the Succession Ball Rolling

Chapter 12: Making Great Exits

Before the Exit

Enlisting the support of your managers

Getting the support of your board

Learning from exiting personnel

Educating the new hire

During the Exit

Keeping your managers informed

Keeping employees in the loop

Helping a new hire feel welcomed

After the Exit

Supporting the new hire

Revising the exit process where necessary

Expecting the Unexpected

Something happens to the new hire

Something happens to the economy

Something happens in the marketplace

Something in your perception of the new hire changes

Chapter 13: Maintaining Your Plan in Today’s Changing Workplace

Three Key Trends in Today’s Workplace

The multigenerational workplace

The culturally diverse workplace

The technologically sophisticated workplace

The Impact of the Key Trends

The multigenerational workplace

The culturally diverse workplace

The technologically sophisticated workplace

Modifying Your Succession Plan to Adjust to the Key Trends

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 14: Ten Mistakes That Sabotage Succession Plans

Not Making Succession Planning a Priority

Not Developing a Full Plan

Not Aligning Your Plan to the Marketplace

Not Considering the Changing Composition of the Workforce

Not Getting Support from the Top

Not Effectively Communicating Your Plan

Not Getting Organizational Support

Not Using Social Media Effectively

Not Effectively Monitoring Your Plan

Not Providing Enough Support for the Successor

Chapter 15: Ten Ways to Keep Your Succession Plan Alive

Build a Competency Culture

Construct an All-Inclusive Succession Plan

Involve Managers in the Planning Process and Get Their Support

Link Your Succession Plan Directly to Your Strategic Plan

Link Your Succession Plan to Your Mission Statement

Turn Your Succession Plan into an Ongoing Process

Plan to Change

Emphasize the Development of Internal Candidates

Build and Maintain an External Network of Successor Candidates

Continually Monitor and Adjust Your Plan Where Needed

Cheat Sheet

Business Succession Planning For Dummies®

by Arnie Dahlke

Business Succession Planning For Dummies®

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River St. Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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About the Author

Arnie Dahlke has a PhD in psychology from the University of Minnesota. Over the years, he has taught full time in both psychology, business, and organizational development departments, served as a director of research for the American Institutes for Research, and worked as an independent consultant.

Arnie has assisted both private (for-profit and nonprofit) and public organizations, using coordinated team-building strategies and process-improvement tools. He brings people together in a spirit of mutual trust, cooperation, and constructive problem solving. As described on his website (www.arniedahlke.com), he helps people in organizations cultivate both continual improvement and customer-responsive mindsets.

Arnie’s private-sector clients have included larger corporations, such as Chevrolet, Saturn, Coca-Cola, Gelson’s: The Super Market, and Northgate Market; healthcare facilities, such as counseling centers and Northside Hospital; smaller organizations, such as the law firm of Ferruzzo & Ferruzzo, Able Computer, New Media Broadcasting Company, The Party Staff, and Your Staff; and automobile dealerships representing a variety of franchises, including Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Infiniti, Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Toyota. His work has helped companies win national awards. As a consultant to the Human Interaction Research Institute of Westwood, California, he conducted interviews in California, Missouri, Nevada, Texas, and Utah at local community mental-health centers for the purpose of identifying the factors that go into the sustaining or non-sustaining of innovative procedures in organizational settings.

Arnie’s public-sector clients have included both cities and county departments. He has assisted city- and county-management staff, police departments, libraries, and planning and public-works departments in such cities as Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, Santa Ana, San Bernardino, Santa Rosa, and Torrance, California.

Throughout his career, Arnie has kept alive his love for teaching. He has taught courses and seminars in psychology, organizational behavior, and organizational consulting. He has taught at all levels, from adult students to college freshmen to graduate students at many colleges and universities, including Antioch University, the California School of Professional Psychology, Marymount College, Phillips Graduate Institute, Ryokan College, the University of California, the University of Maryland, the University of Minnesota, the University of Nevada, and the University of Oklahoma.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to all employees, because their morale and futures are dependent on the quality and successful implementation of succession plans in their organization.

Author’s Acknowledgments

I appreciate the help of everyone who has helped me put this book together. It has been an exciting, although somewhat exhausting, experience, and it’s taught me that you never know how much you know until you start putting it down on paper. I was surprised to find how much I know.

A special thank-you first to my brilliant in-home editor, my wife, Lesli, who pays attention to the slightest detail and improves what I do in subtle but dramatic ways. She has tirelessly supported my efforts through thick and thin, including very long hours spent writing.

I also want to thank Erin Mooney at John Wiley & Sons for giving me the opportunity to write this book; Ken Lloyd for his insightful comments and technical suggestions; and Elizabeth Kuball for her patience, helpful suggestions, and meticulous editing.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

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Introduction

People come and people go in every organization, from large corporations to small family businesses. Some departures are planned and some are unexpected. Your innovative CEO retires. A key programmer in your IT department decides to take a job elsewhere. Your CFO has a heart attack.

When key people leave your organization, you’re faced with the task of replacing them. If you have no succession plan in place, a departure can cause waves of disruption to spread throughout your organization. But if you’ve taken the time to lay out a careful succession plan, the departure may be a mere ripple. It’s up to you.

About This Book

I wrote this book to help you develop and implement a fully functioning succession plan. Business Succession Planning For Dummies includes a wide range of tips, techniques, and strategies for defining your succession needs, identifying and developing successor candidates, and effectively bringing them onboard.