Organizations have risk management strategies and procedures in place for disaster recovery, for employee safety, for computer system outages, and more. But not all organizations have an active succession planning strategy in place, which is a risk management plan for the key talent in the organization. But consider this: how much would it benefit your organization to predict leadership openings, using data and discussions in the same way that you predict other business risks? How much would it reduce your external recruiting costs to address future leadership gaps by proactively developing your top talent, with a sense of urgency to avoid or to lessen the negative impact of a predicted leadership opening when it arrives? The truth is that eventually each employee will leave the organization. Therefore, the risk management function of succession planning is the most critical risk management function for organizational success. Effective succession planning is a process of fitting together the puzzle pieces of organizational talent needs and employee career interests, for the purpose of identifying, retaining and developing talent for business success. This book provides the strategy and the puzzle pieces you will need to plan and to implement an active and effective succession program for your organization. Succession management expert Mark Caruso has created easy-to-use plans and tools you can use to create and implement a succession strategy that achieves results and doesn't sit on a shelf. Use the interview guides and the talent meeting agendas in this book to generate rich talent discussions and to make better talent decisions. Refer to the leadership models and ideas in this book to build leadership programs that address the competency needs of your top talent and successors. Make sure you have an effective succession plan in place for the most critical important asset of your company: your talent!
