How to Make Succession Planning Work in Practice
June 4, 2018 – For executive succession to work, it must be integrated seamlessly with a long-term commitment to leadership development, according to a new report from Furst Group/NuBrick Partners CEO Bob Clarke and managing partner Joe Mazzenga.
The report presented this fictitious scenario: The hospital had waited too long. Barbara had been CEO for many years, but when she announced her retirement plans, no one was waiting in the wings to take her place, no one who had been groomed for just this moment. It was a daunting task to replace her, and not simply because she was well-liked and respected in the facility and the community. The recent years had been rough, and the red ink was growing by the year. It would take some upheaval, and a leader from outside, to begin to turn the ship.
“Barbara’s story is a common scenario that, unfortunately, is replayed every year in provider and payer organizations across the U.S.,” said the Furst Group/NuBrick Partners report. In a recent survey by the National Association of Corporate Directors, 55 percent of organizations admitted their succession plans were informal, and six percent had none at all.
Making Executive Succession Work
Yet if “succession planning” has been ineffective and ignored in recent years, the fault may be in the deployment. For executive succession to work, it must be integrated seamlessly with a long-term commitment to leadership development throughout the organization. “These organizational needs have greater urgency than is always acknowledged,” said the report. “When talent leaves the organization, a gap is created. Departures of key executives create shortfalls in achieving business objectives.”
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In today’s economic climate, that can increase pressures on a healthcare organization exponentially, said the search firm. In addition, the seismic changes created by mergers, acquisitions and layoffs produce cultural and communication gaps that must be solved by the organization.
Leadership Development
According to the study, leadership development provides continuity to an organization and accomplishes several key objectives. Among them, it acclimates and trains young leaders; offers opportunities that help retain executives; reinforces the organizational culture; provides a process that identifies, and rules out, potential successors; and ensures attention to diversity remains front and center.
The chief executive officer and the board must drive this process. “Indeed, progress in the areas of executive succession and leadership development should be part of the CEO’s performance evaluation,” said the report. “And the board should include trustees who are experienced in guiding the succession process or who have gone through the process themselves as a CEO in their own companies.”
Related: Generational Shift: Succession of Older CEOs Slows
Up to 40 percent of the workforce is expected to retire by 2020, according to multiple studies. “That reason alone should spur initiatives to ensure the leadership pipeline is designed and flowing,” Furst Group/NuBrick Partners said. “But surveys show the pace of change is accelerating, beyond the abilities of executives and organizations to keep up. For that reason, some say knowledge and experience will become less important as predictors of executive success than personal traits.”
Find the Best Leadership for the Future
Leadership development and succession planning can reveal which executives are best equipped to lead your health system or insurer through uncertain times in a rapidly changing industry, said the firm. In addition, many organizations are ill-equipped to deal with a senior executive’s sudden departure because of resignation or illness.
Here’s Why Succession Planning Matters
For companies, failure to prepare for the future can be costly at best, disastrous at worst. Yet succession planning remains one of the top challenges facing businesses today. One recent study found that more than half of companies surveyed do not have a strong candidate prepared in the event of a CEO transition.
“A formalized program creates benchmarks for development and success,” said the study. “It can also eliminate silos and create opportunities for cross-training teams of leaders to tackle nagging organizational issues that may have fallen through the cracks due to the leadership team’s time constraints. A final reason for the necessity of executive succession and leadership development is retention.”
These key components of integrated talent management provide senior management with a clear understanding of the competencies and expectations of the CEO role as internal candidates in the pipeline. “They also provide younger leaders with opportunities and seasoning,” said the report. “And they ensure that leadership in your organization is multi-generational.”
Creating the Succession Plan
As the Baby Boom generation continues to retire, healthcare organizations increasingly are looking to increase their bench strength and talent pipeline through leadership development, said Furst Group/NuBrick Partners, which focuses exclusively on the healthcare and life sciences sector. “The goal is to identify successors not only for CEO roles but for other C-suite positions and even titles further down the organizational chart,” the firm said.
“The hard truth is that healthcare organizations have talked a good game around this need for years without significant commitment to making it a reality,” said Mr. Clarke. “A bright spot in this dilemma is that more clinicians are looking for an opportunity to influence the organization as a whole, not merely their own division or department.”
Related: Creating Succession Plans for Millennials
Some progressive healthcare organizations have created in-house leadership academies to groom the leaders of tomorrow, but their effectiveness has been insufficiently studied. “Yet the churn of the healthcare labor pool has companies realizing that working to retain top talent is inherently less problematic than continually shopping for new leaders – it takes four times the salary of a departed employee to replace him or her,” said Mr. Clarke.
Key Qualities for Leaders in Consideration for Success
Furst Group/NuBrick Partners considers it best to organize leadership traits into two categories: individual (character) and organizational. “In our years of working with thousands of executives, we have found that it is the softer skills that make the difference between a good leader and a great leader,” the firm said. “While all of us are born with some leadership abilities, the best leaders are continually seeking to grow and evolve their capabilities, thus maximizing their potential in executive succession plans.”
The firm cited the following traits to keep in mind for each category:
Individual
Humility: As a leader, it’s important for you to put aside your pride and rely on others, said the firm. Listen to others, follow others – in short, be humble.
Patience: Being reactive isn’t the same as being proactive. Things don’t have to happen right away. Patience creates calm and improves decision-making.
Trust: Listen and lean into others. Allow yourself to trust others. As a leader, you get the gift of input.
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Collaboration: Our best work is the result of working with and encouraging one another. Value collaboration.
Integrity: Do the right thing always, without fail. This is the foundation for who you are. Do not compromise.
Courage: What does it mean to have courage? It means to ask questions, to challenge the status quo and fight for what is right. Have the courage to lead – and the courage to fail, which all leaders will do at one point or another.
Love of learning: Seek out all that is new. Ask, observe, question. Consume newness. Embrace “different.”
Related: Companies Lacking In Career Development & Succession Planning Efforts
Tolerance: Be tolerant of ideas and the input of others. Be tolerant of thought, actions and deeds. People are essentially good.
Honesty: Honesty can never be overrated. Honesty cannot be compromised. It is who you are, all the time. Let this never be a question that others have about your character.
Compassion: Leading people requires compassion. Empathy, grace and kindness lead to a compassion that makes for a great leader.
Organizational
Leadership agility: Becoming a leader requires an observant knowledge of how organizations work and an appreciation for how things get done in the workplace, both through formal channels and the informal network, said Furst Group/NuBrick Partners. A leader must be able to settle differences with minimal noise and build engagement. He or she can be direct and forceful if needed, as well as diplomatic.
Building engagement: Strong teams are pivotal. We can’t do this alone. A leader puts a premium on buy-in and employee engagement through communication and dialogue. We won’t always agree, but our teams need to be clear on our reasoning and assured that their voices were heard and considered.
Related: Putting Effective Leaders In Place Now Seen As Urgent Priority
Decisiveness: All leaders will make mistakes. Bad decisions can be altered or reversed, but most organizations will find it difficult to overcome consistent delays on decisions. Worse, paralysis by analysis often proves to be contagious when it starts at the very top of an organization.
Reliability: There are times when an organization needs a shakeup, but most organizations will thrive financially and organizationally when the leader has a steady hand and a long-term view.
The CEO’s Important Role in Succession Planning
At the most basic level, the CEO’s role is straightforward: driving management succession at senior levels, including the early identification of any inside CEO contenders, ensuring that the organization is developing succession-ready executives for all senior roles.
Change management: This is not a cliché or a buzzword. The volatility of the business landscape demands that a leader continually prepares the organization for change by focusing on the organizational vision and openly addressing the obstacles to change. A good leader creates a coalition of change agents.
Elements of Leadership Development
How, then, does an organization develop these traits in its leaders to ensure succession? “A healthy organization ensures that the recruitment, development and retention of talent becomes an ongoing priority of the team and not something delegated to human resources or simply an annual event,” the Furst Group/NuBrick Partners report said. “Top leadership needs to provide the resources and the time for their talent to be developed through various tools and processes. Leadership needs to demonstrate and model this commitment to development; leaders go first.”
Furst Group/NuBrick Partners offered the following critical components for leadership:
Team agreements: Leadership is not learned or cultivated in a vacuum. Leadership teams must come together regularly to establish goals and measure progress.
Related: Egon Zehnder NewsPoint: Walking the Tightrope of Executive Succession
The feedback loop: Part of the hard work of learning to communicate is realizing that feedback is crucial for learning new skills and eliminating old habits. Leaders must realize that feedback is for the good of the organization and that constructive criticism is delivered around behavior, not identity or personality.
Getting beyond the classroom: It’s good for leaders to get out of their normal environments. But simply paying for your leaders to sit in a classroom for a week at a respected university is unlikely to bring the personal or systemic change you seek. Leadership teams must be given tangible projects, not merely simulations, that address current needs of the organization.
Personal investment: Leaders must be invested in their leadership development; it can’t simply become a box to be checked off to please the hierarchy or to earn continuing-education units. That is why we recommend that leaders, in concert with consultants or organizational psychologists, establish specific goals for themselves.
Related: Five Suggestions to Help a CHRO Manage the CEO Succession Process
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor; and Andrew W. Mitchell, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
