"Succession Planning": A Contemporary Project Report On
"Succession Planning": A Contemporary Project Report On
"Succession Planning": A Contemporary Project Report On
SUCCESSION PLANNING
Submitted to
Rajasthan Technical University, Kota
Submitted in partial fulfillment for the
Award of degree of
Master of Business Administration (2011-12)
Submitted By:
NIDHI JAISWAL
MBA Sem- II
Declaration
I hereby declare that this project report on Succession Planning
Which is being submitted in partial fulfillment of the Award of the
Master of Business Administration, is the result of the work carried
put by me, under the guidance of Maam Khushbu Mehta, Lecturer,
Savitri Institute of Management, Ajmer
I further commit that this project work has not been submitted to the
RTU or Savitri Institute of Management, Ajmer, before or for any other
purpose.
( Nidhi Jaiswal)
STUDENT
MBA II SEMESTER
Savitri Institute of Management, Ajmer
CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
This is to certify that the project title Succession Planning
is an original work of the student Nidhi Jaiswal is being submitted for
the partial fulfillment for the award of the Master Degree in Business
Administration to Rajasthan Technical University, Kota. This report
had not been submitted earlier to this University or to any other
University/Institution of a course of study.
( Khushbu Mehta)
(Supervisor)
Place: Ajmer
Date: ________________
Preface
As a part of our syllabus fulfillment of the requirement for the award of Master
of Business Administration (MBA) curriculum set by the RTU, each student
has to pursue a major project.
Working on a project is a pathway to corporate world whereas the explosive and
dynamic environment of informational technology, both in the areas of
accessibility and tools has created a growth market for individual trained in the
techniques of knowledge management.
This report present an overview on the project named Succession Planning.
Acknowledgement
Its a moral responsibility of each individual to acknowledge the help of each
individual who has made your journey smoother for you. To carry out this report I
have got the help from my faculties who have given full support to carry out this
project work. They are the one who motivated and helped for the completion of
this project report.
I would like to thank Ms. Richa Sharma for her help in selection of topic of
contemporary issues, and cooperate with me to carry out this project work. I am
also thankful to Mr. S. N. Haque, who has supported me and help me in fulfillment
of this project report.
Executive Summary
Succession Planning, as it is constituted today, is a hotly debated but generally ignored
practice in corporations and business.
Most manager fail to think about succession planning until it needs to be implemented.
Suddenly there is a void at the top and nobody has been primed to fill it.
Few events have such an impact on a company as the departure of key leaders in
particular the CEO. How that exit is managed not only has lasting impact on the
organization, but it can affect external perception of the departing incumbents
effectiveness and delivery.
Management succession should be perceived as a process rather than an event. The view
and structure of it should not be confined to matter dealing with the moment at which the
reins are handed over to a successor as the outgoing leader retires to the coast and
becomes yesterdays hero or moves on to a bigger or different challenge.
Leader can leave organization for many different reasons, ranging from retirement, and
pursuit of new challenges, illness, death or decision to relocate to a new geographic
region or position.
The obvious starting point for most companies is to identify the key leaders, whose
departure would impact on the business stability, delivery, capability and in turn
profitability.
Succession Planning begin long before the decision or announcement of one of the
leaders departure. It is a system that requires planning, teamwork and ongoing reevaluation and refinement.
Contents
1. Introduction of Succession Planning
2. Working Process of Succession Planning
3. Organization needs a Succession Planning
4. Succession Planning in Indian scenario
5. Succession Planning Differ from Replacement Planning
6. Conclusion
Bibliography
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION OF
As we all know that, every organizatio face some problems, one of them is
leave or join the organization, some people transfer from the job to other or
some leave the organization due to retirement or other reason. So their
position become vacant. It does not create more impact on the working of
the organization at lower level but at the management level this problem
creates more impact. So to cope up with these problems, organization fills
their vacant position with suitable candidate. Organization follows the
process of succession planning. It is a futuristic long term process, where
manager identify, assess and develop their staff to make sure that they are
ready to move forward in the organization when the need arises.
Succession Planning provides an efficient and effective method to
support this movement, which are usually one of three scenarios: one-to-one,
a direct replacement, one-to-many, as a role is redistributed, or many-to-one,
as a new role is created.
Some of the confusion surrounding succession planning is due to
people using the term in many different ways. Succession planning is best
described as a process where one or more "successors are identified for
key jobs, and career moves and/or employee development activities are
planned for these successors. Successors may be fairly ready to do the job
(short-term successors) or seen as having longer-term potential (long-term
successors).
Lets look at one of the most successful business leaders of all time, Jack
Welch, who started working at General Electric in 1960. As he moved
upward in the organization he displayed leadership qualities that set him
apart from his peers. But what did Jack Welch think of succession planning?
One of his most admired skills was the ability to develop his subordinates so
there was always someone ready to take his place when Jack was offered a
promotion.
How successful was his strategy? In 1981 he became the CEO of General
Electric and served in that position until he retired in 2000. Furthermore, in
1991, Jack Welch stated: "From now on, choosing my successor is the most
important decision I'll make. It occupies a considerable amount of thought
almost every day." That's a pretty strong statement for someone that had the
vision and leadership ability to increase the value of General Electric from
$13 billion to $410 billion dollars during his tenure.
Another reason its important is because these high potentials will one
day become the leaders of the Company. This is why their development
needs to incorporate a broad range of learning opportunities in your
organization. The individuals should also be exposed to as much of the
working environment as possible so that they gain a good understanding of
what the company requires to remain successful.
CHAPTER 2
Working of Succession Planning
Plan: The participants of the transfer operation are identified; these include
the current person exiting the role, their successor, the manager and
colleagues where appropriate. A kick off then identifies the timescales for
this transfer operation, and when the participants are available.
Do: The business needs to retain critical knowledge. This is identified by
interviewing the employee exiting the role, their manager and where
possible their colleagues, so that it not just the knowledge that the employee
thinks they should leave behind.
The identification of key skills, who else in the business has these skills, the
exiting employees network, and other undocumented knowledge are
collated an action plan. It also takes into account the actual environment: the
participants involved, the transfer needs expressed, the type of knowledge to
be transferred, and the business circumstances. The activities are then
undertaken to complete this transfer.
Review: The benefits of the individual transfer operation are reviewed and
any lessons learnt are recorded to aid future transfer operations. The
knowledge captured during this operation is the promoted to encourage its
reuse. The benefits for the overall transfer needs of the business are also
reviewed.
Difficulties of succession planning:By their nature, entrepreneurs are hard workers who prefer to do
things for themselves. Usually, they are so busy with the daily management
and operation of their company, they postpone succession planning.
The reasons can be varied. They may not relish the thought of no
longer running the business they worked so hard to establish. They may be
reluctant to give up their business, since it may signal their own aging or
infirmity. There may be strong emotional attachments to their business, or to
the idea of giving it to a favorite family member, regardless of ability. If
there is no family member suited to taking over the company, the owner
could be reluctant to discuss this, for fear of causing pain.
Think of implementing systematic succession planning as making a longterm organizational change. Succession planning requires more of a
commitment to a longer-term, strategic view of how to meet talent needs
than short term, and sometimes panic-driven, efforts to fill vacancies as they
occur. It can be established and operated using ten key steps that have been
field-tested in many organizations, industries, and economic sectors.
Step One: A first step for any systematic succession effort is to clarify the
senior leaders expectations and preferences for a succession program. After
Sarbanes-Oxley, corporate Boards have become more active in succession
planning. A fundamental mistake, and a formula for disaster, is to dump the
responsibility for the succession effort on the Human Resources department.
While the Human Resources function or other parts of the organization must
participate, the leadership responsibility for succession planning rests with
the CEO. If he or she does not favor systematic succession planning, it
cannot be successful.
Step Two: A second step is to establish competency models by talent pool
considering the positions that will be fed by that pool. A competency model
is a narrative description of the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and other
abilities that lead to exemplary performance. Competency models provide
blueprints of the talent to build at present and in the future. In short, a
competency model describes what should be for such hierarchical levels
as executives, managers, supervisors, salespersons, technical professionals,
or other groups. Alternatively, competency models may be created for
specific departments. A recent innovation in some corporations has been to
articulate the organizations ethics, values and code of conduct and then rate
for
cultivating
their
talents
over
time
and
closing
developmental gaps.
Otherwise, individual development plans will not be realized. Often,
financial incentives for talent development can help. For instance,
individuals can be given bonuses if they achieve their developmental
objectives, and supervisors can be given bonuses if their workers achieve
their developmental objectives. Alternatively, periodic meetings may be held
in which individuals must report on how well they are implementing their
individual development plans, and senior executives may report to the CEO
or the Board on how well their employees have been progressing toward
realizing their individual development plans.
Step Ten: A tenth and final step is to evaluate the results of the systematic
succession planning effort. Often, the time-to-fill metric is a key measure of
success. How long does it take to fill positions with qualified applicants?
While not directly a financial measure, the time to fill does translate into
financial terms. Productivity is lost, and so are opportunities, when
vacancies exist in todays right sized corporate settings.
One of the most common leadership development questions that I hear is,
"Why does succession planning feel like such a waste of time?"
Many of the CEOs we talk with these days express concern about the lack of
bench strength in their companies. They are very worried that they lack
sufficient "ready now" candidates to replace planned & unplanned losses of
key leaders. As a result, the future continuity and performance of the
business is at risk. These same executives also tell us that their companies
have been doing succession planning for years.
Here are four practical ideas on how you can get more impact from your
organization's succession planning efforts.
1. Change the name of the process to from Succession Planning to
Succession Development.
Plans do not develop anyone only development experiences develop
people. We see many companies put more effort and attention into the
planning process than they do into the development process. Succession
planning processes have lots of to-do forms, charts, meetings, due dates
and checklists. They sometimes create a false sense that the planning process
is an end in itself rather than a precursor to real development. Many humans
fall into the same trap regarding physical fitness. We may have
fantastic plans in place to lose weight. We may be very proud of our plans,
which include detailed daily goals for diet, alcohol consumption, and
exercise. And if our execution were half as impressive as our planning, we
would be very svelte. Our focus should be on weight loss, not planning for
weight loss.
2. Measure outcomes, not process
This change of emphasis is important for several reasons. First, executives
pay attention to what gets measured and what gets rewarded. If leadership
development is not enough of a priority for the company to establish goals
and track progress against those goals, it will be difficult to make any
succession planning process work. Second, the act of engaging with senior
executives to establish these goals will build support for succession planning
and ownership for leadership development. Third, these results will help
guide future efforts and mid-course corrections. The metrics a company
could establish for Succession Development might include goals like the
percent of executive level vacancies that are actually filled with an internal
promotion vs. an external hire, or the percent of promotions that actually
come from the high-potential pool. Too often, we find companies measure
only the percent of managers that had completed succession plans in place.
3. Keep it simple.
We sometimes find companies adding excessively complex assessment
criteria to the succession planning process in an effort to improve the quality
of the assessment. Some of these criteria are challenging even for behavioral
scientists to assess, much less the average line manager. Since the planning
process is only a precursor to focus the development, it doesn't need to be
perfect. More sophisticated assessments can be built into the development
process and administered by a competent coach.
4. Stay realistic.
Following are two classic examples how succession plans may lack realism:
The head of engineering is a high performing leader who has the potential to
be COO. She has always been in an engineering role. If she had sales
experience, she would be even more ready to be the COO so her
development plan is written to include a job move to be head of sales.
However, this company would never take the risk of putting someone
without sales experience in the top sales job so her development plan
perpetually says, "move to a sales job" even though that will never happen.
The CFO is a high performing leader who has passed all the assessment
criteria to be a high potential, ready-now candidate for the CEO Job. He is
told he is the top candidate. However, the CEO can't stand the guy, and as a
result, he will never get the job as long as that CEO has a say in the matter.
While development plans and succession charts aren't promises, they are
often communicated as such and can lead to frustration if they aren't
realistic. Bottom line; don't jerk around high performing leaders with
unrealistic development expectations. Only give the promise of succession if
there is a realistic chance of its happening!
We believe the four suggestions above can help shift your organization's
focus from planning to development and achieve increased depth in your
bench strength.
reminded that doing jobs at each level requires different competencies, and
the best way for them to compete is to prepare for future challenges rather
than expect promotions for past performance at a different level of
responsibility.
Mistake #4: Trying to Do Too Much Too Fast. The strong resultsorientation of many organizations today emphasizes quick results. Senior
leaders expect to see all the components of a comprehensive succession
system in place immediately. That is not always realistic. It is advisable to
think of implementing systematic succession in a phased wayeither from
the top down or else starting in specific divisions or locations with greatest
need.
Mistake #5: Giving No Thought to What to Call It. A fifth mistake is to
devote no time to considering what to call the succession program. As any
marketer knows, product names do matter. It is not necessary to call a spade
a spade. Many organizations choose alternative names--such as leadership
development program, human capital management program, or even
talent program.
Mistake #6: Assuming that Everyone Wants a Promotion. A sixth
mistake is to assume that everyone wants a promotion. That is not always
true today. In many downsized organizations, workers have seen what
pressures their bosses have to deal with. Some say leave me out of that.
Hence, it is unwise to assume that everyone wants a promotionor even to
assume that money will convince everyone. It will not. Check first. Find out
what people want to do. For that reason, many organizations launch both a
top-down succession planning program and a bottom-up career planning
CHAPTER 3
ORGANIZATION NEEDS A SUCCESSION
PLANNING
CHAPTER 4
Succession Planning in Indian Scenario
made to work his or her way up the management to gain the maturity needed
to appreciate the privileges and responsibilities involved. Alternatively, they
should be bold enough to appoint a professional manager, when there is no
suitable candidate within the family. Some of the more progressive Indian
business houses like Ranbaxy, the Murugappa group and the Eicher group
have demonstrated a high degree of professionalism in this regard.
Many Indian companies are now beginning to appreciate the importance of
planning successions carefully.
CHAPTER 5
Succession Planning Differ from Replacement Planning
Examples
The Tata groups holding company, Tata Sons, recently announced the
setting up of a five-member panel, including one external member, to choose
a suitable successor to Mr. Ratan Tata, Who is retiring in December 2012.
The panel will look at suitable candidates from within the group and
professionals from India and overseas to find a replacement for Ratan Tata,
who retires at the end of 2012, the group said in a statement.
The succession issue at the $71-billion Tata group has attracted global
attention, as two-thirds of its revenue come from abroad, thanks to its strings
of overseas acquisitions over the years, including big-ticket buys like that of
Anglo-American steel giant Corus and luxury car maker Jaguar Land Rover.
The move comes within days of Noel Tatas elevation as head of Tata
International. Noel Tata, half brother of Ratan Tata, is a possible, though not
the obvious, candidate. Tata Sons said in a statement that its board had
formed a selection committee which was in the process of formulating
criteria for identifying the most suitable candidate, taking into account the
global nature and complexity of the groups business.
Succession Planning In Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited:The case discusses the CEO succession planning controversy at Ranbaxy
Laboratories Limited, India's largest pharmaceutical company. It describes
the concept of succession planning and its importance in managing large
companies (especially family owned businesses). It is a classic case that
describes how and why Parvinder Singh (Ranbaxy's promoter, also CEO)
believed in running the business professionally and handed over the
company's management to D. S. Brar, a professional (and a non-family
member), amidst stiff opposition from family members.
Succession Planning in McDonalds:A succession plan always helps. Top companies hold people accountable for
leadership development. McDonalds had to name a successor within just an
hour of the sudden death of its 60-year-old chairman, Jim Cantalupo. The
decision was possible only due to years of succession planning.
In 1994, years before he retired from GE, Jack Welch had started the
succession planning process. He developed a list of qualities, skills and
characteristics a CEO should essentially have. So, GE was ready for its next
CEO, years before it finally had to make the decision in 1999. GE had three
candidates - Jeff Immelt, W James McNerney and Robert L Nardelli. All
three were ideal candidates and aspirants for the top job. All three exceeded
every expectation required. Finally, the youngest of the three, Immelt was
chosen. In November 2000, GE announced that Jeff Immelt would succeed
Jack Welch as the chairman and CEO of the company. W James McNerney
and Robert L Nardelli moved on as the CEOs of 3M and Home Depot,
respectively.
Succession Planning in Motorola:Through the use of various initiatives including succession planning
Motorola has significantly improved the outcomes for women in its
organization. One measure that illustrates this is the number of female vice
presidents. In 1989 Motorola had two female vice presidents. In 1997, six
years after the modification of Motorola's succession planning so that it
incorporated the company's diversity objectives and sought to accelerate the
advancement of women and minorities within the organization, Motorola
had forty female vice presidents, including seven women of color.
CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION
Succession planning is a key strategic issue that needs the time and attention
of top management on an ongoing basis. A proactive approach is far more
desirable than an ad hoc knee-jerk approach. And don't make the mistake of
thinking succession planning is only concerned with "upward" succession.
Lateral assignments may also be used because there are fewer opportunities
as you progress upward in the organization. It's the role of every manager to
help their promising subordinates develop their fullest potential by
continually challenging them and increasing their leadership competencies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. www.google.co.in
2. www.wikipedia.com
3. HRM review magazine
4. www.hut31.com
5. Hindustan Times
6. www.coolavenues.com
7. www.about.com
8. www.ask.com