How to build a talent echelon

According to the experience of many excellent enterprises, five principles are summarized, on which the company can establish a successor management system and cultivate a stable and reliable backup echelon.

Principle 1: Focus on development.

The basic principle here is that succession management must be an elastic system oriented to leadership development, rather than a fixed list of high-potential employees and vacant positions. The other four principles are based on this. Traditional leadership development projects always expect to achieve once and for all results through several training activities. However, the study found that although the training can make participants return to the office full of energy and high morale, the real company life quickly suffocates them. In fact, it is more effective to provide classroom training, and at the same time let the future * * * actually participate in various jobs and contact various bosses. Feasible methods include rotation, assigning special tasks and "learning by doing".

Principle 2: Identify key positions.

Succession management planning usually only focuses on a few high-level positions, while leadership development planning often starts from middle managers. Integrating these two functions into a system can help enterprises to cultivate middle managers, even managers below department heads, into comprehensive managers in the long run. Schneider products company, for example, regards the position of factory director as a key position, because in this position, managers have the first opportunity to manage multiple functions and deal with labor relations and community relations.

Principle 3: Process transparency

In the past, the top management of the company always kept their mouths shut about succession planning, for fear that those employees who were not included in the fast track of promotion would lose motivation. From the CEO's point of view, keeping a secret does have certain benefits, because he can change his mind at the last minute without worrying that someone will be disheartened or furious because of disillusionment. However, because today's employee recruitment and promotion are based on performance, not loyalty or qualifications, knowing where you are will make employees work harder.

Principle 4: Consider progress regularly.

It is not enough to know who can replace the CEO. You must know whether there is the right candidate, who can develop at the right speed and set foot on the right post at the right time. For example, in Lilly Pharmaceutical Company, managers track many succession management indicators, such as how many people are selected into the echelon of candidate managers and how many succession plans have trained two or more prepared candidates. For directors and above, the current incumbent and three potential successors will be displayed. The human resource management department can also know the data of some designated indicators in real time, such as the ratio of employees who have the potential to reach a certain level to the number of employees currently at that level.

Principle 5: Be flexible.

The old succession plan is rather rigid-the list is rarely changed after it is confirmed. In contrast, the best practice organizations we study all follow the Japanese concept of "improvement", that is, continuous improvement of processes and contents. They improve and adjust the succession management system according to the feedback from department heads and participants, monitor the development of technology and learn from other leading organizations. In fact, although these best practice companies we have studied are very successful, none of them think that their succession management system can run for more than one year without improvement.