Effective Succession Planning: Ensuring Leadership Continuity and Building Talent from Within, Fourth Edition

CHAPTER 10

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Developing Internal Successors

For a succession planning and management program to be effective, the organization

must have some means by which to replace key job incumbents as vacancies occur in

their positions. Promotion from within is a time-honored and crucially important,

albeit traditional, way to do that.

But, to prepare individuals for promotion, the organization has an obligation to

do more than merely identify present and future work requirements and perform-

ance. It must find some way to clarify—and to systematically close—the develop-

mental gap between what possible successors can already do and what they must do

to qualify for advancement. Individual development planning is the process of clarify-

ing that developmental gap; internal development uses planned training, education,

development, and other means—including on-the-job work assignments—to close

developmental gaps and thereby meet succession needs.

This chapter focuses on determining the organization’s collective succession

needs, using promotion from within to meet those needs, clarifying individual devel-

opmental gaps, and closing those gaps systematically through planned training, edu-

cation, and development. More specifically, then, this chapter addresses the following

questions:

' What is bench strength, and how can the leaders of an organization test bench

strength?

' Why is internal promotion so important for succession, and when is it—and

when is it not—appropriate for meeting SP&M needs?

' What is an individual development plan (IDP)? How should one be prepared,

followed up, and evaluated?

' What are some important methods of internal development, and when should

they be used?

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