Michael Lamoureux, who writes the Sourcing Innovation Blog, has come up with a great and fun idea to introduce blog topics for various Procurement bloggers to write about in the same week in order to offer readers an assortment of opinions on the given subject. (I thank him for the invitation to participate.)
He started a series on discussion of Procurement talent with the first entries focusing on succesion planning.
In my experience, I have yet to see it happen. As Michael points out, people find the topic unpleasant. I believe that is one reason why they avoid it. Another reason is that if a manager talks about replacing himself or herself, then the person next in the corporate food chain can only assume of two things is going on - the person is planning on leaving the company or is using a succession planning discussion as a back-door way to state that he or she feels it is past time for a promotion.
Without proper succession planning, there is a general sense of chaos when someone leaves a position unexpectedly. I have seen the scrambling and re-assigning of commodities in the desperate attempt to simply "have someone covering the phones" rather than give serious thought to how the commodity should be managed and who in the department would manage it effectively and for whom it would both complement and expand current skills.
If the above paragraph made you nod knowingly, then take a look at Michael's analysis and PLAN accordingly.
Comment Preview