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With the continuing challenges of finding and retaining key talent, organizations of all sizes today need to focus on identifying and preparing associates for potential future leadership roles. According to a recent Towers Perrin study, fully 75% of HR managers cite talent management as a critical issue requiring ever increasing levels of attention.
Product author, Andy Beaulieu, has nearly 20 years of experience in the human resources and organization effectiveness field. His initial exposure to succession planning occurred while working for a regional insurer a decade ago. “A good, visual succession planning tool really crystallizes top management’s thinking about the next generation of leaders. However, the costs and challenges of implementation can discourage even large organizations.” His approach of helping organizations achieve results quickly, without waiting for major systems or change initiatives to take effect, led him to develop this easy-to-use, yet highly capable, tool for planning and managing leadership succession.
Les Allan, Director of Business Performance P/L, adds, “This tool cuts through the complexity and administrative overhead of other succession planning solutions. Yet its graphics are among the best I’ve seen, and the easy-to-use reports are effective. I was impressed at what Andy had achieved using Microsoft Excel – a tool that virtually every organization already uses every day.”
Beaulieu adds, “The new Succession Planner allows organizations to track and display the succession nominations of its emerging leaders. The included Process Guide lays out a simple business process for collecting, reviewing, and validating those nominations in a way that creates alignment across the organization. For succession planning to thrive, the process has to be strong, with HR and top leadership playing key roles. The tool just enables the process, but in a way that makes success decisions easy to see.”
The new tool is designed to ease the pain of succession planning with some well thought out features. For example, the tool displays the succession status of incumbents in an informative Organization Chart that is automatically updated with changes. Another useful feature is the “CP Matrix” that plots the distribution of staff using the key variables of contribution and potential. Automatically generated reports inform key leaders about any individual and any position in the database, plus a simple scorecard displays some key succession metrics for the organization.
The tool is supplied as a Microsoft Excel template and can be used on any Microsoft Windows-based PC with Excel 2002 or later installed. Accompanying the tool are two key resources: a User Guide for those administering the tool, and a Process Guide to assist HR in setting up a strong succession planning process. Both resources are supplied as Adobe Acrobat PDF files, which are readable on almost any computer. The Adobe Acrobat Reader is available as a free download from the Adobe website.
For those wanting to try out the tool before purchase, Business Performance P/L has made available a trial version of the tool as a free download. The trial version is complete with sample data that can be modified, so customers can see how the tool will work in their organization. The tool’s author is also available to help organization’s implement their succession planning process.
The complete succession planning pack and the free trial version are available for download from the Business Performance P/L website.
About Andy Beaulieu
Andy has over 20 years of performance improvement experience as both an internal specialist in global organizations and as an external consultant. Based in Washington DC, USA, his services span the spectrum of technical and interpersonal interventions. He has developed and implemented large-scale tools and systems to improve organizational effectiveness, and he has also coached and trained managers to improve their individual effectiveness.
Andy holds a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, and undergraduate degrees in engineering and business from the University of Pennsylvania. He has authored ten chapters in books on organizational effectiveness, most notably multiple entries in the renowned “Pfeiffer Annual” series published since 1971.
About Business Performance P/L
Established in 2003, Business Performance Pty Ltd (businessperform.com) provides business and management consulting services globally in a range of business areas. From its website, the company also proudly supplies a wide selection of business and management software products designed to make managing organizations easier and more effective. Products featured include tools, templates and guides in the areas of training and employee development, project management, organizational change and career planning. All products can be purchased and downloaded easily from anywhere in the world from the Business Performance Pty Ltd website.
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