Ever watch hungry people go to the supermarket? With their tummies grumbling and their mouths watering, they are ill-suited to handle the incredible choices all around them. Cruising the aisles, they grab whatever happens to look good: Hotdogs! Humus! Raspberry jam! Chocolate! California rolls!

Then they get home and wonder what in the world they’re supposed to do with a cornucopia of foods that cannot, in any way, be assembled into a meal.

Watching Gen Y try to piece together their careers often looks much the same: they collect the greatest experiences they can at the moment, only to pull back later and realize that they can’t quite work their experiences into a cohesive career.

Gen Y is now being let loose on the corporate scene, too hungry for the success they’ve been promised would be theirs to manage the decisions they’re being asked to make; they’re too ravenous to show anything approaching the patience or discretion needed to navigate the aisles purposefully. They’re sampling a bit of everything that looks good, they’re not enjoying the experience, and they’re starting to blame the supermarket (read: corporate America) for their upset stomachs.

The solution is so simple; all they need is a shopping list to help them manage the mind-numbing selection in front of them. They know this, and they’re asking for it, but… in a tragically ironic twist of fate… no one has it. No one needed a list before; when there was no choice, the shopping list was superfluous.

(Imagine asking an Italian for a shopping list for the ingredients for making pasta; she’d wave you off, telling you that if you need to shop from a list, you may as well buy pre-made pasta, yours in going to be horrible. Or asking a guy for a shopping list for a BBQ? He’d laugh in your face for needing someone to point out that you need to buy “chicken” and “Bar-B-Que sauce” before firing up the grill.)

This is pretty much what’s happening when Gen Y goes to their older counterparts for help: they get waved off in disbelief. “Are you serious? You can’t possibly need help with that!” comes the reply to their requests for help.

Previous generations didn’t have this problem. Previous generations didn’t have the luxury of choice the way we do today. When I interview successful executives, their stories are often the same: they grabbed the first job they could and never let up because they had nothing to fall back on if they did let up. They were successful because they had to be successful. Failure was not an option.

Today’s youth, however, know only options. For 25 years, they’ve ben encouraged to collect more options, to leave their options open, or to do whatever would put them in position to have the best future options. They joined all the clubs to get into the best college, they went to the best college to get the best job, and now… what was that? I’m supposed to make a choice? I’m supposed to start limiting my options? I’m supposed to stop browsing and start putting things in my shopping cart? Stop snacking on the end-of-aisle freebies and pick my one menu to stick with?!

How do you put together a meal when all you know how to do is munch on pre-cooked, pre-sliced, pre-packaged, pre-toothpicked morsels that a nice marketing lady thrusts at you every time you come around a corner? How do you put together a career when all you know how to do is job hop from one solicitous firm to another, when everyone around you is lamenting the death of loyalty?

Older generations need to help Gen Y make their way through the store. They need to show how passion, commitment, and a sense of personal responsibility can be used to create the tunnel vision needed to see through the noise. They need to stop being exasperated, they need to stop slapping labels on Gen Y (lazy! insolent! incorrigible!), and they need to, in a very firm and honest way, show them how to shop for experiences that can be put together into a career.

And they’re going to have to do it from a perspective they don’t have… they’ll have to do it from the perspective of one who is surrounded by too much choice… because that’s the only perspective their audience knows.

Posted under Succession Planning, Gen X & Gen Y, Current Trends

A: I received a number of responses about my recent post, If I ran for office, one of which is posted as a comment below the blog entry. The issues raised in the comment are ones I sometimes hear from coaching clients who are frustrated at their inability to make headway trying to move The Political Machine.The issue is, in short, that when you’re young, you can often feel stuck: if you say you have no power then people call you lazy and tell you you’re not trying hard enough, and if you exert yourself, then those in power tell you you’re going about it all wrong and admonish you for your lack of political astuteness. No energy or no power. Either way, you get nowhere.So what gives? How–as a member of society, or even a local organization–can you take on the power structure?I recognize myself in this question; I am frequently asking the same thing. For a long time, I went right at it, and as a result, I heard all kinds of wonderful feedback, such as: I should do my job and not the job of my boss; I am arrogant and brash; I have an edge; I lack political astuteness; and I don’t know what I’m talking about, among other things. Some of this feedback was true, some of it was a projection of someone else’s issues with himself, some of it was meant for someone other than myself, and some of it was nothing more than a red herring designed to steer me away from making someone else’s life hard. But which was which?Ah… that’s the question! Because if you can answer that, then you can work with, around, and through the existing power structure to effect real change…Here are several steps to effecting change in an organization when your power base is nil.1. Find an high level insider you can trust who is willing to talk with you. When we get to step two, you’ll need to have this already in place. Otherwise, you really will be stuck! This can be a formal mentor, a friend of your mom or dad, or an informal friend in the office. It’s the person with whom your conversations are easy, meandering, challenging, and uplifting.2. Question everything. Ask “Why?” If you get feedback, ask why you’re getting that feedback. If you fail to make headway with a proposal, ask yourself why not. Everything that happens to you is feedback to you about your effectiveness, so constantly question what’s happening. Not getting a call back? Ask yourself why. Everyone lining up outside your cube to see you? Ask yourself how come.When you’re just starting out, you generally lack the scope of vision to project out far enough to interpret this feedback correctly, which is why having someone you can trust is so important: you’ll need that person to help you make sense of what’s going on. (You’re not as good at filtering information as you think. None of us are.)3. Consider social and personal factors. When I say that you need to expand your perspective and extend your scope of vision, I don’t mean just a little; putting yourself in your boss’ shoes and then stopping isn’t nearly enough. You need to be able to become someone else for a moment in order to understand where and how politics are at work. You need to feel someone else’s hopes and fears in order to correctly interpret their feedback of you. The way to do this is to constantly remind yourself that everything is in play.Young professionals have a tendency to want work life to be work life and private life to be private life. (I think this is because at early stages of career life, friends still hail from high school or college, while work people are different and the worlds don’t generally collide much. Just a guess.) When trying to understand how a senior executive reached a conclusion, the young professional therefore considers only the business implications of the decision. He fails to understand how personal and social factors play into the decision. He also probably fails to grasp the full complexity of the business decision, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume this is not an issue.4. Don’t solve the organization’s problem, solve the person’s problem. Once you recognize that everything is in play, you can start to dissect the feedback you get more accurately, and you can start to plan for action with more certainty. And the first thing you’ll realize is, an organization is a collection of people who all need to be accounted for individually.The cost of overlooking individuals’ issues in favor of organizational ones is high. In college, I spent a summer working as an intern in a bank and about halfway through the summer, the other intern started dragging his feet on a project we were doing together. When I started picking up his slack, he threatened to beat me up. Why? Because he needed the job (we were paid), and he was afraid that if we finished the job, we’d be fired early. I’ll never forget our conversation; ignoring the people in favor of the organization almost got me my ass kicked. Usually, the cost is not meted out physically, but the ultimate result is the same.I am not suggesting that you sacrifice your goals in order to accommodate others’ personal issues; nor am I suggesting that personal hang ups should interfere with business. And I am definitely not saying that you consider any feedback you get as misplaced projection of someone else’s problem. I am simply being a realist and stating that–right or wrong–personal issues do get in the way of business, and if your goal is to create change, then you need to make it your business to understand what personal issues are at play, why they are impacting peoples’ behavior, and how you can deal with them. On top of this, you need to layer on the what, why, and how related to your own imperfections… again, this is a perfect place for you to leverage that trusted insider: this should be the one person who’s feedback you pretty much take at face value, painful as it might be at times.5. Speak in terms of the organization’s problem, not the person’s problem. Here’s where the real test comes in: for all your awareness of individuals’ issues, you generally can’t speak them. Forget being impolite, it just doesn’t work! If I came up to you and said, “I believe you don’t like my idea because it requires you to make a presentation to your boss and you’re afraid of public speaking,” I wouldn’t finish my sentence before you’d get defensive and throw me out of your office. So what you need to do instead is spell things out very carefully, in a way that addresses my concerns without stating them. There is a great example of this toward the end of the movie Shakespeare in Love, in which Queen Elizabeth addresses Thomas Kent in a conversation that happens smoothly on two levels. Contrast this scene with the one in A Few Good Men where Lt. Kaffee asks Col. Jessup directly about the log books, resulting in the log books getting doctored. (Btw, what makes the ending of A Few Good Men so surprising to the characters in it is that none of them really believe Lt. Kaffee’s direct approach would be as successful as it turns out to be. It’s the exception that proves the rule.)6. Change your time perspective. I’m not a patient guy. When I see the answer, I go right for it. Always have. I used to hate it when people would tell me to slow down and have patience: I saw that as an excuse to accept mediocrity.But here’s the deal: as you get older, your entire concept of fast and slow changes. For instance, at 25, one year is 4% of your life. By the time you are 50, that same year is only 2% of your life; that same time period feels shorter. In other words, two years at 50 feels roughly the same as one year at 25… There are also other factors involved, of course. At fifty, your attention is split across far more things than at 25. At fifty, you have your work, your hobbies, yourself and, likely, your spouse, your kids, your kids’ significant others, maybe even a grandkid or two. At 25, your attention is much more concentrated. So not only does the 25 year old perceive time to be crawling, but the 25 year old has more time to sit there and dwell on it! Again, this isn’t to say one way is right and one way is wrong–I’m still young enough to side with the 25 year old on this one–but it is to say that the young professional needs to understand that the concept of time is relative, and needs to account for that in his or her thinking.There’s a lot to each of these steps; I will break them down in future posts.As for effecting societal change, the process is the same, but at a much higher level. I once voted against a promising Chicago Alderman because, despite my suspicions about my then-current Alderman’s personal indiscretions, our Ward was well maintained, safe, and thriving. The up and comer didn’t offer to solve any of my problems, nor did she create a problem to solve. And if she couldn’t do that with me, I imagined she wouldn’t be able to do that on the City Council, either… which meant that all the great service I was accustomed to would be put at risk the day she got installed.

Posted under Coaching & Consulting, Succession Planning, Personal

I have had a number of conversation lately on the topic of handling ambiguity. While going through some old computer files at home this afternoon, I came across a post from my old personal blog that I thought fit the subject. Most of it is just plain fun for newly expectant parents, but if you pay attention to the shifts between phases, you’ll notice that the shifts are subtle. If you think about how these shifts manifest in conversation, you might even agree that they rarely clear, bright demarcation lines; instead, they represent small yet important shifts along a continuum. When I talk about handling ambiguity at work, obviously the situations are different, but the concept remains the same. Ambiguity is often about spotting subtle, significant slides along a continuum.

If you or your friends are thinking of having kids anytime soon, you’ll get a kick out of this post. If you have kids, this will be a fun little throwback to a time of uncertainty and innocence. And if you are in the habit of extrapolating lessons from your personal life to your working life, you may also get a little something more out of it, too…

It’s a post entitled: The 5 Stages of Getting Pregnant and it has to do with the process a couple goes through when deciding when to have that first kid… here it is again:

There are countless types of pregnancies. Some have an asymptomatic, barely-register-a-blip-in-the-belly experience, while others tend more towards the and holy-shit-we-need-to-reframe-the-door side of things. There are the I-felt-great-for-the-first-trimester-and-then-pulled-a-Rip-Van-Winkle-for-six-months women and their I-was-out-running-my-daily-nine-miler-when-my-water-broke counterparts. I have seen women who lose their taste for everything except French fries, and others whose cravings for all their favorite dishes intensify; I don’t think I’ll ever forget that one dinner where my friend’s wife was almost in tears, begging please, please, could she—please!—just have one little, tiny sip of wine… she ultimately sated herself by running her fingers through the shallow ring of Merlot I left on the paper-covered table and licking them.

Whatever the pregnancy, however the pregnancy, only the goal is the same: deliver that baby!

To couples who go through it, there is no such thing as “carrying well” or “carrying poorly.” “Carrying well” is a phrase coined to sell overpriced maternity clothes. “Carrying poorly” is a phrase coined to sell more Star magazines. Guys especially care about neither, so we are free to view pregnancy as the binary event that it is: you either are or you are not. Guys are simple creatures, really. We really just want a happy, healthy kid. Believe me, ladies, no matter how shallow the man, the one thing that overrides his desire for a hot, prego babe of a wife is the fear that some eating-disorder-related complication might impact his wife or his kid and rob him of sex for an even longer period of time.

Before we can really understand what a first pregnancy is all about, it helps to have some perspective. There is a lot of work that goes into getting to this point—planning, thinking, worrying, arguing, general thising and thating—and to understand the mind of the expectant couple, one must understand the process the couple went through to get there. Fortunately, getting to the point of pregnancy is more or less the same for everyone. There are five stages to the process:

STAGE 1 - Permanent 5 Year Plan
Let’s say it’s 2005 (which it is). You ask your friends what the what is. The Stage 1 response is: “Maybe we’ll have kids in about 5 years. We want to enjoy our marriage first.”

Now let’s fast forward to 2006. No, make it 2007. Two full years have gone by, and the issue of kids comes up again. You didn’t bring it up this time, because you are tactful and know that would be rude to ask point-blank, but you did have a hand in steering the conversation this way. (You are so smooth how you do that!) Your friends ask the question of themselves aloud: “What are we thinking in terms of having kids?” They are still Stage 1, and you know because, as they pretend to work through the issue in front of you, you hear exactly the same phrase as years earlier: “Maybe we’ll have kids in about 5 years. We want to enjoy our marriage first.”

The winning conversationalist that you are, you push them ever so gently on the fact that they were planning to have kids in five years two years ago. You are testing their Stage 1’ness.

If they look you back right in the eye, and in total earnestness they say, “Yeah, but those first couple of years didn’t really count,” then they are still Stage 1, through and through. Stage 1’ers have no intention of having kids anytime soon. They talk about pregnancy like they would talk about a movie or buying a car or a condo, or changing jobs or what the hot new restaurant is; at a certain stage of life, it is “appropriate” conversation. All we know about the Stage 1 couple is that the issue of family has come up privately between them, they both indicated that they would “one day” like to have a family, and the conversation then quickly changed to what DVD to rent that night. There’s nothing more to it.

STAGE 2 - Cracks in the Master Plan
A Stage 2 couple responds wholly differently. Self-awareness has crept in and they accept the inevitable, that this is not just conversation anymore. Having kids and moving to the ‘burbs and getting the minivan are still “out there,” but somewhere along the way, maybe when the Stage 2 couple was driving by a house in the suburbs recently (on the way to visit her parents, perhaps) out of the corner of their eyes they saw a dad washing his car on his driveway, his young kids helping him and his wife playfully directing the scene from a folding chair on the lawn. And that’s when your friends, through some remarkable, primal process that no one quite understands, took unconscious stock of some facts. For instance, that the second car in this family’s garage was the same 535 VW Civic Escape they themselves were driving in. And that the dad was wearing the same Banana Republic shirt as… and hold on, that’s my same pair of Rollerblades hanging up there on the garage wall, above that Trek 800 that’s just like mine, too. Hang on here, your friends’ reptilian brains said to them, they look just like us!

At this stage, the official, master plan still puts kids out there on yonder horizon, but cracks are appearing. Just like iron rusts when exposed to water, prolonged exposure to reality causes master plans to grow brittle and crumble. Who knew! But that’s what it is. Little seeds of reality, carried on the voices of parents, friends, media, and random other advice-givers have taken hold in those cracks and are spawning roots, driving the cracks deeper and deeper… The Stage 2 couple is quickly coming to grips with the idea of actually wanting kids.

Recall your well-posited observation from earlier about the missing two years. Posed to a Stage 2 couple, the same comment is now met with: “Yeah, we know, and if it happens sooner that’s fine. I mean, ideally we’d like to wait a few more years before we start trying, but if we got pregnant tomorrow we’d like, you know, deal.” The Stage 2 couple cannot even get themselves to reaffirm the myth of the 5 Year Plan when challenged.

STAGE 3 - Master Plan, Meet Master Window
The shift from Stage 2 to Stage 3 is subtle but significant. Look at these two statements and you can see what I mean. The first one is from a Stage 2 type comment from a husband; the latter is from Stage 3:

Stage 2 Husband: “Look, she needs to work another… I’d say… two years before we’ll be in a position to really start thinking about it. Because another two years, and then if we start trying there’s still probably another year’s income in there for her before she can’t work anymore, that’d be fine in terms of getting started comfortably. If something happened before then, I mean, we’re not destitute or anything, I mean, you know, we’d figure something out, but the plan is to sock away a few more years of income first.” It is long and full of meaningless rationalizations left over from Stage 1.

Now here comes the Stage 3 version:
Stage 3 Husband: “Look, she needs to work another… I’d say… two years before we’ll be in a truly comfortable position to go get pregnant, and that’s with the expectation that she’d still keep working right up until she physically couldn’t do it anymore. Personally I’d like to see her keep working—you know, set up a computer and desk in the delivery room—but hey, we can’t have it all! Look, there’re also people in mud huts who have like seventeen kids, so who the hell am I to think that I know how much money it takes to raise a kid. Whatever happens, happens.”

Did you see that?! The difference here is that in Stage 3, the notion of having a “plan” related to parenthood has pretty much unraveled. Planning has given way to a implicit plea to Lady Luck. Stage 3 couples have figured out that the notion one can ever be financially ready for a kid is a farce. There is acceptance here of the fact that you don’t plan for a kid the same way you plan a honeymoon, that there are forces of nature at play that really don’t give a hoot about your plans, your financial standing, or whatever. What’s coming will come, and it will cost what it costs, and that’s really not what it’s about anyway.
The length of time a couple spends in Stage 3 can be as brief as just a few minutes, but it is a potent stage nonetheless.

STAGE 4 - Dancing the Social Soft-Shoe
In Stage 4, a couple might say things like, “We’re not trying, but whenever it happens, it happens,” or, “We’re not trying, but we’re not not trying, either.” These are comments that sound good in social settings but mean nothing.
In other words, at Stage 4 couples turn into liars. (I think Alan Greenspan should probably seek to hire Stage 4 folks as staff writers.)

By the way, the lying gets worse, building to where the couple starts telling boldfaced lies as they enter Stage 5. Oh ye righteous single reader! Pass not ye judgment, for you shall do it too, one day, sure as God put little green apples on this here Earth! Cut them some slack.

I’ve watched people (usually single or married at Stage 1) get mad at their Phase 4 friends for not being more straight with them. What they don’t realize is, there is no “inner circle” of friends who get a different, more honest answer. “We’re not trying but we’re not not trying”is the more honest answer from a Stage 4 couple; people outside the circle get nothing.

And it should be this way. Nobody knows how long it will take for them to get pregnant. It would be naive for a woman to run around saying “We’re trying! We’re trying!” because three years and countless visits to the specialist(s) later, she’s going to have everyone and their mothers in her business, tsk-tsking behind her back and wondering if it’s her or if it’s him. Nobody needs that. You certainly won’t. So go easy, OK?

You know what they call people who don’t use protection during sex, don’t you? They call them, “parents.” When your friends start saying things that make no logical sense, read between the lines. Read: “parents.”

One more thing. Don’t push it. Stage 4 is a very sensitive time and can last a long while. It requires a delicate touch and lots of diplomacy. You thought you were good in Phase 1? Forget about it, that was just a warm-up. You’ll need to put your faith in the friendship and content yourself with a whole lot of unanswered questions about why this one asked for her Greek salad without Feta, or why that one, normally such a boozehound, is sipping Diet Coke tonight. It is what it is; the truth shall be revealed in due time.

STAGE 5 - Game On
Stage 5 is pretty big stuff. In this stage, the couple is physically prego, but they have no idea what that means. Nobody outside the two of them except maybe her mom knows anything. They’re waiting to pass the magic 3 Month mark before sharing the news. It’s a pretty nerve-wracking time.

This is when new parents start losing sleep. It’s a myth that you lose sleep starting when the baby shows up, it’s actually now, in Stage 5, during the very early stages of pregnancy that sleep goes out the window. I slept much better after our first daughter showed up than I did while I was waiting for her. A few things to expect when you get to Stage 5:

Women, a single EPT costs about $14-$16. I’m telling you this because you are going to go through a few. Like six. Because when that little line shows up, it will be too light, it will appear too slow, and it will be too close to the other one for you to trust it. You are going to look at the box and where it says “99% Accurate,” you are going to interpret that as “Hunh, it’s not perfect. I thought these things were, but not so much! Maybe I should take another one just to be sure.”

(My valedictorian wife needed six tests before she would admit that she might be pregnant. Then she called her doctor and scheduled blood work so she could be sure.)

Guys, the bottle is going to start looking real good for a while here. I’m talking Johnie Walker, not Enfamil. You are no longer in control of things, not now nor for the rest of your life, and the feeling is a little bit weird at first. Good luck, you’ll do fine once you get over the hump. The demotion is well worth it–and that’s exactly what it is: a demotion. Just don’t drink too much, you’ll need the money for diapers.

Conclusion
That’s them, the 5 Stages of Getting Pregnant.

From there you enter pregnancy, and that’s worth a blog unto itself. (In fact, I used to have one published.) One thing deserves an early mention, however: EVERYTHING YOU NEED FOR THE BABY IS VASTLY OVERPRICED. Shop online, get the cheap crib, get machine-washable everything, buy as few toys as possible. Resist The Sales Machine. Shun over engineered, gimmicky lifesavers. They will suck you in and rob you blind.
The only thing worth spending the money on is the Dutelier Glider. Everything else is more or less a scam. My wife and I had one great sales lady at a baby store when we were registering who, when my wife looked around and asked absently, “OK, what do I need… what do I need?” responded quite refreshingly, “Let’s be clear, Sweetheart, there’s nothing in here that you need. What do you want?”

That said… Enjoy.

Posted under Succession Planning, Personal

The following tactics are guaranteed to result in a lackluster, toothless succession plan:        • Do it because you feel you have to. 
Remember when you were a kid and you ate vegetables because you had to? Remember how long your mom made you sit at that table while you muscled down bite after vile bite of brussel sprouts? You never would have eaten them if not for your mom, no matter how good for you they were, just like you’ll never put your heart into a succession plan you’re doing because you feel you have to. You might have the discipline to keep yourself at the table, but you won’t have the heart to do anything more than go through the motions. 

When you’re dealing with people, going through the motions isn’t enough. Unlike vegetables, people can not only tell when you’re heart’s not in it, they care, too.        • Small business owners: Do it because you can see your retirement on the not-so-distant horizon. 

The upside: your heart will be in it. The downside: by waiting so long, you’ll have lost much (if not most) of your negotiating leverage.        • Do it because the business books say all the great companies do it. 
You can follow the advice of the ivory tower experts, or alternatively, you can wait until someone writes about a company that managed to be successful despite not having a succession plan, and then model yourself after that firm. 

Don’t forget to call yourself a visionary.        • Have HR run it. 

I know many quality people in HR, and if given a succession plan to run, I think they would each have the same question I do. The question goes like this: You don’t want your business leaders to take direct responsibility for grooming their successors because…?        • Keep it a secret. 

Yes, not announcing the succession plan will save you from having a few yucky conversations. And yes, announcing the succession plan may create some kind of class system within your organization. However, if your options are a transparent and flexible class system on the one hand, and an inflexible and secretive caste system on the other, I’m thinking that a few yucky conversations is a small price to pay for future stability, honesty, and free upward mobility of top talent.        • Use the phrase “Succession Plan” to describe the process. 

Remind the boss of his mortality at every opportunity. Describe the plan as what will happen upon “retirement” or when he “gets hit by the proverbial bus.” Never mind that the CEO is probably struggling with encroaching proof of his or her mortality, from the array of vitamins that supplement breakfast to the dinner that resists digestion until well after midnight. 

At the same time, develop in the younger generation a sense of entitlement equal to that of a crown prince.Getting the succession plan rightOn the other hand…If you really want to do succession right, you might want consider a change in lexicon. Forget succession; yours is not the House of Tudor. Just do what you need to do in order to run your business and make sure that it will keep running even if you retire or–heaven forbid–do get hit by the proverbial bus.Think about developing your people the same way you think about educating your kids. Think in terms of creating future opportunities. 

Make sure key individuals expand themselves to the greatest extent possible. Find opportunities for them to develop their own businesses, help turn around other areas of the enterprise, or take on more responsibility in a corporate role. Get them outside help. Let them come to you with ideas on how and when they’d like to move forward, and if they fly the coop, so be it. If you develop talent, you will have no problem attracting talent. And one day, when you need that talent (for whatever reason), you’ll be glad it’s there. 

And at that point, you may have a conversation like this: 

Someone else:”How is it that you were so well prepared for this moment?” 
You: “I made sure we had good people who were ready to take over in a situation like this.” 
Someone else: “You mean like a succession plan?” 
You: “Yeah, I guess you could call it that… but for us, I must admit, it really was just part of what we did every day.”

Posted under Coaching & Consulting, Succession Planning, How to Self-Destruct

A: Business leaders, if you are considering implementing a succession plan in your organization, or if you have one and are thinking about overhauling it, consider putting your plans up against the following common-sense test:1. Am I emotionally invested in making this a success?If your heart is not in it, it won’t work. You cannot delegate this process. If you are not intimately engaged, then every person brought before you will appear be too underqualified or too threatening. Either way you’ll kill his career. If you don’t believe in succession planning, then don’t do it. If you want to do it, start by educating yourself about it first. As Ben Kingsley says in Searching for Bobby Fischer, “Don’t move until you see it.”2. Do I have enough time before my retirement to execute a succession plan?The upside of waiting until the last moment: as you hear retirement’s siren call, your heart will be in it! The downside of waiting until the last moment: you will have limited time to search for viable alternative candidates should the lead horse fail, which means you’ll have lost much (if not most) of your negotiating leverage. In most businesses, five years is not enough time to source a candidate, test him, bring him up to speed on the nuances of the business, have him develop the necessary customer relationships, have him win over internal people, and build the trust you’ll need to know that your retirement package will be honored. Consider a strategic sale or a merger instead.3. Are my line managers driving the process?Line management, not HR, drives successful succession processes. HR has two main functions: the strategic alignment of people and goals, and tactical, administrative support. Most companies’ HR departments handle the latter function quite well. Many fewer have an HR department that can plug into the business on a strategic level. If your HR department is predominently administrative, then handing succession over to them is tantamount to delegating your capital structure to your staff accountants. If you are forunate enough to have a strategically capable HR organization, then pushing succession to them will inevitably result in the following question: “And you don’t want the business leaders taking direct responsibility for grooming successors because…?” HR is a support organization, providing the tools to identify, develop, and promote high potential future leaders. Still, HR is not the final voice. As with any profession, the expert offers advice, but ultimately cannot assume responsibility for the final decision.4. Have I communicated the process across the organization?It is true that not announcing the succession plan will save you from having some yucky conversations with people who are bitter about not being named to the list. It is further true that announcing the succession plan will likely create some kind of class system within your organization. (Kudos to you if you’ve built a culture where that does not happen!) But at least the process will be transparent and flexible, with potential mobility across classes… the alternative–an unknown, unspoken cabal of future leaders–results in an inflexible and secretive caste system that erodes trust and encourages politics… precisely what most companies use succession plans to get away from!5. Does my language create the right image in everyones’ minds?Semantics matter, and the semantics around “succession” conjur images of dead kings and queens as much if not more than new faces in the Boardroom.”It’s good to be the king,” remarks Mel Brooks in History of the World, Part I, and don’t we all know it. History is littered with ambitious brothers and uncles, devious regents, and the dead crown princes who took for granted the good life they had. Putting your annointed successor(s) on par with royalty can give less capable individuals the wrong kind of career aspirations. Unless steps are taken to alleviate the chasm between the Chosen Ones and everyone else, ambitious passed-over managers can become as dangerous as Hamlet’s uncle: not only have their desired career paths been blocked, but the reason for the blocks have been given names.A secondary consideration about the phrase “succession planning:” introducing tomorrow’s leaders with a reminder of your mortality is not a good idea if you want to stay positive about the process. Many CEOs struggle with encroaching age every day, from the moment they get up and look at an array of vitamin supplements until they go to bed at 2am, after they have finally digested the last of dinner. Why invite such thoughts into work, too?6. Am I taking a long-term, strategic perspective?Think about developing your people the same way you think about educating your kids: it is what you all need to do to create the right future opportunities.Whatever you call it, make sure key individuals expand themselves to the greatest extent possible so that your business keeps running even after you retire or–heaven forbid–after you get hit by the proverbial bus. Coach them. Take your people and find them opportunities to develop business, move them into other areas of the enterprise and/or give them corporate responsibilities. Get them outside help. Let them come to you with ideas on how and when they’d like to move forward, and if you can’t support those ideas and they fly the coop, so be it. If you develop talent, you will have no problem attracting talent. Put another way, if you develop talent, then the day you need it, it will be there for you.Whether you are a large enterprise or small business, you should be able to answer “Yes” to all of these questions.

Posted under Q&A, Coaching & Consulting, Succession Planning