How Bad is Your Succession Management?

“84% of organizations report having a lack of candidates in the pipeline ready to assume open and critical positions.”

That’s not good, folks. As we wring our hands on the lack of talent in the external pipeline, perhaps we should be spending more time attending to the skills and development of the folks already in the organization!

Laci Loew, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, recently published their State of Succession Management 2015. If your organization is in the 84% of organizations above, this report will be helpful in laying out the challenge, what and how high performing organizations in this regard are executing differently, and how to think about the first steps of moving your succession planning needs forward. The report is a great read and has some pretty terrific content and data included.

This graph gives you a taste of what you can expect in terms of getting started as well as what successful outcomes are from both succession management and business focus perspectives.

The report outlines 7 critical findings of Brandon Hall’s research on this topic:

1. Talent pipeline health continues to threaten leadership continuity.

2. Succession management commitment is on the rise with prioritization for a formal strategy for all parts of the organization.

3. Technology is under-utilized, hindering efficiency of succession management.

4. Successor development as a critical component of succession management is improving.

5. Lateral mobility takes center stage as a critical successor development strategy.

6. Using predictive analytics to proactively plan for critical position vacancies will separate organizations with effective succession management from less effective organizations.

7. Today’s succession management budgets are modest at best, but expected to expand significantly over the next 12 months.

The insights fleshed out in each of these key findings are critical reading for any talent management professional. And you’ll also get some useful data to use in building the ROI for succession management investment in next year’s budget.

The report is published by Skillsoft and can be accessed here. At 34 pages, this is a solid piece of analysis and a useful and highly practical read.