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A Marketer's Guide To Succession Planning - Liz Weber [Interview] |LeadersHum

We had the pleasure of welcoming Liz Weber to our interview series. I’m Aishwarya Jain from the peopleHum team.

By peopleHumPublished 4 years ago 9 min read
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Liz Weber is the president of Executive leadership coaching, at Weber Business Services. Her main interests are in the field of Strategic planning for associations, Executive coaching, and strategic advising. She is a highly sought after Keynote speaker, for various topics which include Leadership retreats, succession planning, and leadership training.

Just a quick intro of peopleHum, peopleHum is an end-to-end, one-view, integrated human capital management automation platform, the winner of the 2019 global Codie Award for HCM that is specifically built for crafted employee experiences and the future of work with AI and automation technologies. We run the peopleHum blog and video channel which receives upwards of 200,000 visitors a year and publish around 2 interviews with well-known names globally, every month.

Sekar is the EVP of Engineering. His prior stints include various product Engineering roles in Successfactors/SAP, Yahoo, and Informatica with 30 years of experience in both enterprise and consumer internet products.

Sekar

Welcome, Liz. We’re thrilled to have you.

Liz

Thank you, Sekar. I appreciate this.

Sekar

Thank you.

So the first question I had for you, Liz, was to tell us a little bit about your work with Weber. What does Weber Business Services really do?

Liz

Well, basically, what we do is we're a small company. We specialize in working with organizations in three different areas. So one of the things that we do is facilitate strategic planning sessions and workshops.

So we will work with boards of directors, company owners, leadership teams, executive teams to help them identify and map out - where do they need to take their company or their organization over the next 3, 5, 10 or more years to stay viable, successful, relevant, and take it to the next level?

As part of those conversations and Sekar, invariably, as the leadership team starts to define how their organization needs to be different in the future, the conversation obviously, then shifts to, given how we need to be different, how does that affect the type of talent where we're gonna need at that point in time in the future?

So we start having conversations around a succession of workforce planning to identify how they're talented skill set needs are going to shift going forward.

And so then the third thing that we do is, we also provide long term leadership development and executive coaching to help the leaders within the organizations in enhancing their skills so that they're able to really develop the talents within the workforces that they leave to really have very viable, fluid and highly talented companies with lots of deep skillsets and talent organization-wide.

Sekar

It's interesting.

Succession Planning is obviously something that's of deep interest for multiple organizations and I would be really interested to know a little bit more about your experience with some of the strategies that you have seen that organizations use for Succession Planning.

What do you think is the magic formula that many organizations use to identify the successes or leaders for tomorrow?

Liz

Well, I'll tell you first off...

"The thing that I have seen over the years that does not work is where you identify a handful of select high potentials, and you focus your energies on them."

Because what happens when you have these very few select group that you focus your energies on really becoming the heirs apparent?

A couple of things happen. Number one, and almost immediately you start creating a divide within your workforce where you have a we-they mentality, where you have the chosen few and everybody else is somehow now lesser than what they were before.

Succession Planning also pulls resources to that select few away from the multitude of others that also need additional developments and you end up putting a lot of time and effort in a select few, and quite often you will pit them against themselves. And so they start cannibalizing themselves.

And then you further diminish the pool that you're working with, and you hope that the ones that remain will rise to the top and stay with the organization. So by creating the select few, you, by default, create a process where you minimize the potential of candidates that you have to work with.

So I say that as a process and a practice that I recommend my clients do not follow. What I have seen and what I recommend and what I do with my clients is first off, kind of the antithesis of what I just said is...

Instead of focusing on a select few, let's create an organization where succession planning, and building depth and backfilling for ourselves is the first and primary responsibility of every position in the organization. So we do it enterprise-wide.

So whether we're talking about a front line sales clerk or the CEO of the organization, I work with my clients to ensure that every position has one or two, possibly three individuals who, individually or collaboratively, can slide in and fill in for them, should they not be able to come to work for one day because they're sick or in this current situation because of other factors.

What that does Sekar is...

"On the path to true succession planning, this basic process starts building depth and starts the leadership team to get an insight into."

So what is my current talent pool? How skilled are my current employees, and where do we have gaps and where do we have needs currently, with our current workforce that need to be addressed now that could also take us up for succession and future growth.

So this thing's a foundation piece first and foremost, and then we look at succession planning. We then look at true succession planning only after the organization has a true strategic plan, because that strategic plan is what's going to define the type of organization the future leaders and future workforce need to be able to support, manage and lead.

So quite often with my clients, once we get this basic enterprise-wide depth building methodology and mindset in play, then we take a pause and we say, Okay, let's now really work on your strategic plan to start educating everybody on that. And if you don't have a clear strategic plan, let's get that in place now because that's the kind of company your leaders need to be up to lead in the future, so let's tell them why we're building the skill sets that we're building.

Sekar

It's interesting, slightly off the list of questions.

How do you actually then make a distinction between the high performers during the succession planning stage versus the average performer during the succession planning stage? Or should there not be any distinction at all as part of the succession planning?

Liz

So that's a great question. I'm really glad you asked that, because if there is a term that frustrates me, it's a high performer, because what is that? What is a high performer? And it depends upon the person who says it in the organization.

So a high performer to one manager may be an employee who comes in every day. It doesn't cause any problems and does exactly what you tell them to do and maybe a little bit more. And for that manager, man that employee is a high performer because they don't cause any problems.

Where for you and me a high performer might be somebody who comes in and just completely does amazing things every day.

"So the term 'high performer' to me is bothersome. Because again it can cause teams to pull apart because of what it means to different leaders. So instead of using the term high performer, this is again where I encourage my clients to say, Let's not focus on high performers. Let's focus on, given the organization, let's think about an organizational chart now. Okay?"

So if we have our current organizational chart and we have all of our current employees identified in this organizational chart with their current position title and then in each one of those boxes where we have identified each one of our team members below their name, we have 1, 2 and 3 and in those 1, 2 and 3 spots, we can identify who backfills for them. This goes back to my prior comment.

We start getting a full picture of our organization and where we have depth and where we have a lack of depth. Now what starts happening here is when we look at that org chart and stage one here we can start to identify high performers or individuals who are really strong in their role because what will happen is we will have individuals who will have their own name in their little box, but they will also have people that can fill in for them because they're not afraid of power and others knowing what they do.

And we'll also get a sense by looking in those boxes where we might have, well, here is Sekar and there's nobody in the box below him because he doesn't think anybody can do his job. Well, one manager might say, but he's a high performer, and my book will say, no, no, no. He's a control freak because he's not sharing information. And so this is where we're, again,...

I want to look at who is able to do the jobs that we're currently paying them to do, and we expect them to do competently and who also is willing to build depth in that position because they want to ensure that the work can continue to flow through that position, regardless of who is occupying it at the time. And that is a completely different mindset than looking at a high performer.

"A high performer is an individualistic viewpoint. I want someone who understands. Yeah, I'm a key player, but it ain't all about me."

Sekar

Excellent. Thank you. It's very insightful.

Many companies now days are also using HR technology tools for doing succession planning and so on. What's your opinion on these tools? Do you think these tools are effective when really doing a succession plan?

Liz

I think any tool can be effective if you know why you’re using it and it somewhat goes back to some of our prior comments here Sekar, is, if you're using a tool that allows you to better visualize your current workforce, current skill sets, future needs and future skill sets and analyze that data then that’s wonderful but if you’re using a tool because you anticipate the tool is going to give you the answer, then I think you're using the wrong tool and you’re using it for the wrong reason.

You're not really understanding what Workforce Planning and Succession Planning really is. I hate to say it that there are many managers, and there are many HR professionals who view succession planning as ‘let's fill boxes with names so that when one person retires or leaves or is terminated, I know who else I can move in to that slot’. That's filling slots. That's not succession planning.

That’s NOT all, folks! To continue reading this awe-inspiring blog, click here https://s.peoplehum.com/hoa1a

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