Are you afraid of what might happen when key leaders leave your organization? Worried about the impact of favoritism on succession planning? Stay tuned as in this episode of the Hire Calling podcast, your hosts, Pete Newsome and Ricky Baez, dive into the critical topic of succession planning in the world of hiring, staffing, and recruiting. With a particular focus on eight essential steps, Ricky, an HR consultant and college instructor, shares his expertise. He highlights why succession planning is often neglected and discusses how organizations frequently struggle to implement it effectively. The conversation sheds light on the common practice of favoritism in leadership selection and the importance of considering skillsets and input from various stakeholders in the succession planning process.
8 Steps for Effective Succession Planning
Start Early, Keep It Ongoing: Begin succession planning early, and make it a continuous effort. Share employee knowledge to avoid last-minute scrambles.
Reflect Company Culture: Ensure your future leaders embody your company's values. Plan for talent development and promotions accordingly.
Predict Vacancies: Identify and prioritize roles likely to be vacated, such as retirements, and plan ahead for replacements.
Prepare for Surprises: Even unexpected departures become manageable with succession planning. Identify potential successors and be ready.
Test Your Strategy: Evaluate potential successors by giving them leadership opportunities during absences.
Integrate Succession and Hiring: Connect succession planning with your recruitment strategy. Account for vacancies created by internal promotions.
Seek Employee Input: Engage employees in conversations about their career goals, including lateral organizational moves.
Enlist Expert Help: Consider professional staffing experts to guide your succession planning journey.
Mistakes to Avoid
Prioritize Succession Planning: Regularly review your strategy and talent pool.
Involve the Full Team: Engage the leadership team for transparency and culture fit.
Widen Your Talent Pool: Develop a broader group of high-potential team members.
Diverse Development Methods: Use various methods to cater to different learning styles.
Transparency is Key: Be open about your organization's commitment to succession planning to build trust.
Are you afraid of what might happen when key leaders leave your organization? Worried about the impact of favoritism on succession planning? Stay tuned as in this episode of the Hire Calling podcast, your hosts, Pete Newsome and Ricky Baez, dive into the critical topic of succession planning in the world of hiring, staffing, and recruiting. With a particular focus on eight essential steps, Ricky, an HR consultant and college instructor, shares his expertise. He highlights why succession planning is often neglected and discusses how organizations frequently struggle to implement it effectively. The conversation sheds light on the common practice of favoritism in leadership selection and the importance of considering skillsets and input from various stakeholders in the succession planning process.
8 Steps for Effective Succession Planning
Start Early, Keep It Ongoing: Begin succession planning early, and make it a continuous effort. Share employee knowledge to avoid last-minute scrambles.
Reflect Company Culture: Ensure your future leaders embody your company's values. Plan for talent development and promotions accordingly.
Predict Vacancies: Identify and prioritize roles likely to be vacated, such as retirements, and plan ahead for replacements.
Prepare for Surprises: Even unexpected departures become manageable with succession planning. Identify potential successors and be ready.
Test Your Strategy: Evaluate potential successors by giving them leadership opportunities during absences.
Integrate Succession and Hiring: Connect succession planning with your recruitment strategy. Account for vacancies created by internal promotions.
Seek Employee Input: Engage employees in conversations about their career goals, including lateral organizational moves.
Enlist Expert Help: Consider professional staffing experts to guide your succession planning journey.
Mistakes to Avoid
Prioritize Succession Planning: Regularly review your strategy and talent pool.
Involve the Full Team: Engage the leadership team for transparency and culture fit.
Widen Your Talent Pool: Develop a broader group of high-potential team members.
Diverse Development Methods: Use various methods to cater to different learning styles.
Transparency is Key: Be open about your organization's commitment to succession planning to build trust.
I'm going to do it too. Okay, there we go. You're listening to the Hire Calling podcast. I'm Pete Newsome and this is your source for all things hiring, staffing and recruiting. I'm joined once again by Ricky Baez. Ricky, how are you on this Friday morning?
Ricky Baez:
I am doing great. Friday is here. Weekend is here. Weather's great for grilling. College football is the best time of the year, Pete.
Pete Newsome:
And Halloween season, which we both love. So that's right, this is good.
Ricky Baez:
I actually went to Halloween Horror Nights on Sunday. It was insane. It was insane, but well worth it.
Pete Newsome:
So we're going to talk about something today that's hopefully a little less scary but only if you plan for it and that is succession planning how to do it right, and there's eight steps that we'll talk through Now. This is of particular interest to you right now because you're teaching a class at Rollins College about succession planning.
Ricky Baez:
That's correct. Right now, I've got about 21 students that are in their master's program and we are talking about what succession planning is and how they can use it at work or as a consultant, because this is something I mean. I know you said it's not scary, but let me tell you it's. With the amount of organizations that don't use this, it is actually pretty scary for an HR consultant. So, yeah, we need to take a deep dive.
Pete Newsome:
Why do you think I have a theory, but I want to hear from you? Why do you think most companies struggle with this?
Ricky Baez:
Because most companies have their favorite leaders and they have their favorite leaders because of their interactions with them and they don't take into account some of the skill sets that they're going to need to actually be successful, right? So a lot of organizations, a lot of these senior executive leaders, they have their favorites and they're kind of afraid that their favorites may not be looked at the same from everybody else because it's with succession planning. Everybody has an input on a specific leader to be. So I guess some organizations say and I've actually heard this we don't have time for succession planning.
Pete Newsome:
Now, that makes sense. That makes sense to me. It's one of those things you don't have time for it until you need it and you realize you should have made time. Probably right, but that's like a lot of things in life and business.
Ricky Baez:
It is. It's just one of those things that the value isn't necessarily present without it being needed. It's needed is when the value is felt.
Pete Newsome:
And then it's too late.
Ricky Baez:
Yeah, then it's too late.
Pete Newsome:
Let's back up before we go forward, if you wouldn't mind. What is succession planning? Describe it briefly, if you could.
Ricky Baez:
Succession planning is a strategy that you put in place that helps the organization put the right leaders in place in case somebody retires, somebody leaves unexpectedly or they are forced out unexpectedly. It's the more time that goes by without a strategic leader in place, the more money you're losing and the less influence you have for you employees who do have that direct connect with your customers.
Pete Newsome:
That makes sense, and so you also answered the question there of why it's important.
Ricky Baez:
For those very reasons, Absolutely, Because you want to know. I mean, it's always good to know that your favorite leader is always going to be there. But what if they hit the lotto? What if, unfortunately, they pass away? What if they do something they're not supposed to get? Let go? The business cannot stop. It still needs to propel forward and you have to be ready for that.
Pete Newsome:
Absolutely Well. We know that change is inevitable. We know that surprises come up constantly, so to prepare for those it just makes sense on paper. I think it's probably easier said than done. I think you have to apply foresight that most companies I think the bigger you are, the more resources you have for that sort of effort. I think for small businesses it's probably harder than for large. Would you agree with that?
Ricky Baez:
It's actually easier for small businesses. It's easier because you don't have the many leaders to choose from. Good point Versus large organizations. You have a huge pool and it does take more time. It does take more effort and it costs more money the bigger you are, but the more important it is.
Pete Newsome:
I understood. Well, all right, let's get into it. Let's start with the first step. I think I'll let you lead this. But what is the first step? I know we have a blog that we wrote on four-corner resources about this that I asked you to challenge to see, since you are knee-deep into this right now to see if you agree. So I'll let you pick it apart to hear your thoughts. So step one when do we begin?
Ricky Baez:
Step one. So there are eight steps. So in this blog there are eight steps for effective succession planning process. The first step is start early and make it an ongoing team effort. I could not agree with this more. This cannot be one of those ones Well, I mean, it is a once-in-a-year thing but it cannot be one of those things that you only address when it's needed.
Ricky Baez:
It has to be a weekly thing, it has to be a monthly thing, it has to be a quarterly thing. The more you do it, the more consistent you are, the more comfortable you're. Executive leadership is going to be in that process and the key word here is process. We have to put this as part of the process. We have to do this as much as the one-on-ones. We have to do this as much as the quarterly reviews or annual reviews or bi-annual reviews. So the earlier you start and the more often you do it, the easier it's going to get. So, start early, make it an ongoing thing with your team, but the key is going to be consistency. You've got to be consistent with it, whether you're in research and development or finance.
Pete Newsome:
Makes so much sense. Now you said it's the kind of thing you touch regularly. Weekly. Does it have to be that frequently, can you? Is quarterly enough.
Ricky Baez:
Quarterly is enough. I mean, I say weekly because some organizations they do have weekly meetings with their people right With their teams one-on-one. So if you're in a higher type of leadership position where you do have one-on-one with a team leader, then every conversation has to have an ingredient in the conversation, has to have a path, a leadership path forward. If the employee wants that, if the employee wants that. So yes, you've got to have those conversations for it to be consistent and easy.
Pete Newsome:
And not every employee does, and that's OK. We know that.
Ricky Baez:
That is perfectly OK, and actually that's one of those things. You know what Can? I skip to the end real quick, because that one right there is towards the end.
Pete Newsome:
You're going to do that anyway. You do that no matter, every time, so sure.
Ricky Baez:
You're, because number seven is use employee input to guide your decision. And I've said this in the past, Pete, it's you as the employer. You are the car right, you are that employee's GPS and that employee has to drive their career and they have to tell you where they want to go in that career and you should be able to help them along the way. I'm saying all of that just to say not every employee wants to be in leadership.
Pete Newsome:
Understood Well, and we know that all too well. And again, if you're communicating openly on both sides shouldn't be an issue. I think those problems arise when assumptions are made, and we all know what assuming does. So we shouldn't do it. Stay away from that. Just communicate, put it on the table and understand what everyone's objectives are. If you can do that I mean, it sounds so easy and in sitting here now it makes sense. But we know those things are easier said than done. But if you start early and you plan because that's what this is all about planning- yes, it is about planning and folks.
Ricky Baez:
I know a lot of organizations. They tend to shy away from it and look, I get it From a business leaders perspective. You don't want to spend a lot of time, money and effort in things that doesn't necessarily bring immediate value. But the important thing to really keep in mind here is that this does provide value, but at a $30,000 for view not right there. So you have to have the strategic mindset to understand the full value in this process.
Pete Newsome:
And that's why I mentioned earlier by default, I would say the larger companies would have an easier time having the resources to be more strategic, or I think a lot of small businesses just live in constant reactive mode. That's true too, not that they should, but it's more of a necessity. However, having the discipline to plan ahead, to think medium term, long term, to really be strategic, it's one of those things, and, as a business owner for 18 years now, I think about all the time. There's those things that I know I need to do it, but boy, there's a lot of fires to put out on any given day and we have to be disciplined enough to make the time and do the planning.
Ricky Baez:
And don't we train people to do that, Pete? Don't? We want a leader working for us that knows how to prioritize?
Pete Newsome:
Of course.
Ricky Baez:
This is something we train people to do. You have to prioritize. So I mean, I guess it's one of those things that we are receiving, we are experiencing a result from our doing. We want something, somebody you can prioritize, and then somebody puts I don't know benefits packages on top of this and this doesn't get touched, and then it becomes an issue.
Pete Newsome:
That's right. What's the saying? The cliche, if you fail to plan, then you should plan on failing right and failing absolutely. All right so, but we're planning, we're doing this, so the next thing you want to do is identify the type of leader you want, right? I mean, is that? Do you agree with that Thought in the process?
Ricky Baez:
I do, folks, you have to. In order for you to figure out what kind of leaders you want to cultivate, what kind of leaders you want to put in place, you have to know what your culture is, you have to know what your core values are, and you have to create an environment where your leaders and your employees, even yourself, are living and breathing that culture. Now, not all cultures fit all leadership styles and not all leadership styles fit all cultures. So, from the beginning, you are going to want to decide what is the type of leader that you want. You want a pragmatic leader. You want a forward thinking leader. You want a leader who is really, really influential. It depends on A the business you're in, the kind of customers you have and what kind of business dealings you have with that customer, and what kind of culture you want the organization to show from a branding perspective. So these are some things that you really have to think about before you start putting together a succession plan.
Pete Newsome:
I think this is also an opportunity to make improvements, to upgrade your leadership. It's all part of that picture. Every organization wants to be better tomorrow than they are today. No surprise there, but the leadership in place guides that probably as much, if not more, than anything else.
Ricky Baez:
You said something interesting right now, because what happens is if you have an organization that always fills positions from within, then yes, I mean you are cultivating leadership, you are cultivating the type of influence you want and you would build a process for that. But remember, it's a succession management process Completely takes away any type of opportunity from somebody from the outside to come in. Absolutely Because otherwise why would you need it?
Pete Newsome:
Well, how are you going to grow, evolve and improve if everyone only knows the same way of doing things, the same style, the same approach? And I've had to come to appreciate that over the years where, as an employee in my younger days, I thought, well, you should only promote from within, and because, as an employee, that's what I'm striving for, I want to earn that, and then, if I do, I think I deserve that to some degree. Now, that's a bad word to use, right, we know better.
Ricky Baez:
I get it.
Pete Newsome:
But there is value in bringing in that outside expertise, new perspectives, way of doing things and honestly, I wish I had earned that a lot sooner. I held on. When I started my own business a long time ago now it was I built it to be the company that I wanted as an employee but couldn't find, and one of those things was that internal promotions that I didn't want to bring people from the outside over the top of great employees, Because I had that done to me and I didn't like it. But I see the value in it now differently and I wish I had picked up on that sooner. But live and learn right. That's why we're here now. We know better and we can share these pieces of advice.
Ricky Baez:
Well, Pete, I'll tell you this I don't know of anybody just starting out in their career who wouldn't feel that way if that happened to them. Because when I started out in HR, I always thought why would you want to go outside? You've got great talent in here. It wasn't until I grew up in my career and I was the leader that I'm like oh, we got blinders, we need fresh blood, we need fresh ideas. So I don't know of any new employees starting out in their career that would feel differently than what you and I did growing up in our career. So I completely get that, completely understand.
Pete Newsome:
So we mentioned earlier that change is inevitable. So the next thing on the list plan for these vacancies. Anticipate what's going to happen, and that's a great motivator to stop and consider succession planning, even when you don't think you have time to.
Ricky Baez:
Organizations that have a defined retirement plan. It's easy for them because you have a formula that tells you what how many people are going to leave. You quote unquote in X amount of years, the Federal Aviation Association of the FAA I think that's what it's called the FAA has some rules about pilots that you cannot fly after a certain age.
Ricky Baez:
So, that tells a lot of these organizations. Well, once you hit a certain age and you're still there, you're going to retire with us. I know how many pilots are going to leave in five years? So now I have five years to cultivate my leadership to get to that level. That way I don't miss a step.
Pete Newsome:
What is that age? Do we have any idea?
Ricky Baez:
I thought it was 62.
Pete Newsome:
I could be wrong, you can't fly at that age, but you can add 22 and be President of the United States. It's just fine.
Ricky Baez:
Look, if you're flying a plane, you got 200 souls on like literally right At your fingertips. I mean I think you're 62. Somebody please correct me, I don't know.
Pete Newsome:
I'm not going to be crazy, but having access to nuclear weapons seems like something you should have. I don't even want to talk about the average age in our Congress. So, look, we should separate the type of vacancies right To your point. Those are predictable. You know what someone's age is, you know what age they're going to be and, in a scenario like the one you described, that they will be departing. People retire. There are predictable vacancies, but there's also those who you don't see coming right. So those are two different considerations.
Ricky Baez:
So, Pete, I'm about to say I said this in class and the whole class cringe, but it's just because the cringe is not false. You know who's good at succession planning.
Pete Newsome:
Who.
Ricky Baez:
Drug cartels.
Pete Newsome:
Okay, okay.
Ricky Baez:
No, seriously, they're great at it. When somebody goes to jail, somebody always steps up and when that person is in place, they're always training their right-hand person right. There's this book. I suggest people pick it up. It's called Narconomics and this book talks about how the drug cartels of today if these folks who run those things would put those skills that they have for legal use, we would be in a much better place in this world. But I'm saying that because you do have to plan for the vacancies that you see coming. You also have to plan for the vacancies you don't see coming. Right. You always that seatbelt right, that's right. That seatbelt that you go into need, and how that works is the plan you put in place for vacancies. You don't anticipate. You've always have to have to. It's like Star Wars. You always have to have a master and an apprentice.
Pete Newsome:
You were so good, you did it 15 minutes without a Star Wars reference.
Ricky Baez:
You know I cannot go on a show without talking about Star Wars. Right, but it's so. Here's the best way to gauge it. Whenever somebody goes, whenever a leader goes on vacation, and you've already identified who that second in command is going to be you put that person in this place. You don't call that person on vacation. You don't call that person in the hospital Susan got it, billy got it, marcia got it right and you put them in those positions. And this is where you have to expect they're going to make mistakes and this is where part of your strategy has to have a support system for those folks that are not 100% used to it, but if they make a mistake, hr and the senior leadership is there to help them through it. You've got to have a process for that, just in case somebody gets hit by a bus or somebody hits the lotto and they just leave you. You've already got that one person that has 50% of the experience.
Pete Newsome:
Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and easier said than done. And that leads us to the next point, which is testing these scenarios in real life, and that's a challenge.
Ricky Baez:
You have to be willing To let your new leaders fall and scrape their knees. You have to be willing to let them fall, make a mistake, but you have to have a process to minimize the effect of that mistake for everybody else in the organization. Right, so, anticipated somebody is going to step up, even if they're not going on vacation, right? Just hey, why don't you take a step back and let Billy take over for for a month and see how he does? Let's Susan See how she does and have a mitigation plan in place in case. Because, remember, you got to take those calculated risks. You just can't take a willy-nilly risk because you may cause the organization a lot of money, but the amount, the amount of money you spend, the amount of money you lose in those small mistakes, it's nothing in comparison to what would happen if you're not ready for that person to step up, because then your clients are going to notice. So you have to, you know, compare those dollars and cents makes a lot of sense.
Pete Newsome:
So we're all along. You know I it occurred to me that you could make a whole story with your car analogy with this after you made the seatbelt Comment. So that's my challenge you was come up with. You know it entire. You have a succession planning. You know article about. You know with cars as the analogy.
Ricky Baez:
So how annoying it is, until you need it.
Pete Newsome:
Something like that. Right, but? But there's a lot, there's a lot of similarities there, I think. So so the next thing on the list let's talk about Hiring. Right, we're higher calling here. We talked about hiring, staffing and recruiting, of course. So, you know, as we are talking, you could be thinking well, what the heck does this have to do with hiring? Right? Well, a lot, because you don't just hire for today, you need to hire for the future and plan ahead. So no better, you know, no better tie to hiring than succession planning.
Ricky Baez:
This is the rhetorical question to all the recruiters out there, right? The question is, how many times have a candidate ask you what, where? What, what's your, what's your career Paffing plan? Right? What? What is your career progression look like? What's your plan for that?
Ricky Baez:
You have some employees that do make a decision on whether they jump ship from their current organization to yours, on whether you have a good plan for them to move up. You got to think about why they're leaving their previous organization, whether it's money or no career progression. If you have a well-defined plan, sometimes that is the hook to go into need to actually have them accept the offer letter and start with you Absolutely. Sometimes people do take a step back in their career for an opportunity to move forward in a new organization when the opportunity was absent in the previous organization. So if you have a well-defined plan, it better be a part of your, of your, of your recruitment market, because that is a reap I hate to call it bait but that's a really good incentive for people to done ship to come to you, especially if they're looking to progress in their careers.
Pete Newsome:
Well, as you know, I believe that a recruiter's job is not to convince candidates to take a job. That's true, right to you, and I even made a post about this on on like dinner this week, saying that, look a good, you can. You can be a persuasive recruiter and convince someone to show up for an interview, even accept a job, if you're persuasive enough. But that is not something you should be doing. You should present the full picture, because the goal is for an employee Not just to start the job but to stay and have a happy ending at the end, with all parties Happy with it, with the, the outcome in in.
Pete Newsome:
In this case, we're talking about really long term, and so I think it's brilliant to present the full picture and not just here's the job today, here's the job and how it can evolve in in on both sides. So recruiter should be having those discussions with their clients and saying what, what is the path right? Not I know what it is today. That's great, that's that's. We have to check those boxes. But what does the future look like? And candidates who think ahead, who think beyond the moment, they want to know those things and if you don't have an answer, you're going to lose a. You're probably going to lose a little bit of time. You're probably going to lose a lot of the best candidates out there.
Ricky Baez:
You got that right, and not only where, where, where the employee would go from the recruiting perspective, but also success stories when I worked at Darden restaurants. Darden used to own Red Lobster and I'm going to I'm going to name drop here Dave Pickens. He used to be the president of of Red Lobster about 10 years ago. He has since been retired. You know how he started in that organization as a bus boy in the late 60s, early 70s.
Ricky Baez:
You he started as a busboy made it all the way up to president of the organization. If that doesn't tell a candidate that this organization has a well thought out succession management plan, then I don't know what will. And Darden did Darden did do that they had a year-long manager in training program to have the next leaders ready just in case somebody decides to leave. So it's a great marketing tool and you know what? And if you have that out there, honestly Pete recruited you right. They don't have to convince anybody.
Pete Newsome:
Correct.
Ricky Baez:
Correct. The plan is there and everything says it, and the only question you have to say when do you want to start?
Pete Newsome:
That's right and then go from there. What a great story, though, and what.
Ricky Baez:
From busboy to president of the entire organization. I didn't know that Okay.
Pete Newsome:
I love it. That's great. It doesn't happen often enough, but that's that's. There's no better testimony to, like you said, an organization thinking ahead. So now input. You mentioned that that's next on our list Communication internally. Talk to your employees. Not everyone wants to be a leader, that's not a surprise, but it doesn't mean they're less valuable to the organization.
Ricky Baez:
That's correct, and the biggest mistake a leader can make about their employees is to put them in a leadership position when the employee A is not ready or, b, more importantly, they don't want to. So what happens is is these conversations need to happen, often in the one on ones right. Every one on one, about the employee's performance has to have at least five minutes in there about where do you want to go, where do you want to be and how can I help you get there? Now notice I said I'm not going to get you there how I, as a leader, can help you get there. I'll give you the blueprints, I'll give you the map. You have to walk, you got to do that and and and. It's up to the employee. And if the employee says, no, boss, I'm good, I just going to stay here and be an analyst, then help him be the best analyst the organization has ever seen.
Pete Newsome:
Absolutely, and then do that, and then you're all set.
Pete Newsome:
Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Well, ricky. The last thing on our list is to enlist the help of experts where necessary. So we have you. We have great recruiting organizations like Four Corner Resources, who will look beyond just the, the basic job description. So there's multiple avenues to go in that direction and you really do.
Pete Newsome:
I mean, I can't state this enough and of course, I'm biased, but I've been doing this for a long time successfully. And and this is what I've learned that you need to look at the bigger picture when you're recruiting. Don't just look at the skills on a job description. Look at who the individual is Right. That's how I used to take job orders, job wrecks from, from prospects and clients. I'd say great that you. You're telling me the, the, the details of the job, the hard skills. Tell me who you need to hire Right.
Pete Newsome:
I want to want to understand what you expect of this person over time, not just can they do the job, do they will, they will, you want them in the job? Right? Where's the future of the job? And the same conversations you need to take place with candidates. It's not about can you do it. Is this a job you want to be in and for the right reasons. So that's expertise from a recruiting standpoint. We need to draw these things out in the conversations we have. But what about from your perspective as a, as an HR consultant? Where can you add value in these discussions?
Ricky Baez:
Look, pete, I it's. Um. I know that YouTube is really big right now. I know a lot of people. When they want to do it yourself, they're going YouTube right.
Ricky Baez:
I learned a long time ago don't go that route. I just had office installed in my lights and you think I'm going to do it? No, cause you'll see me in the news about some guy who burned his whole neighborhood down cause he didn't know what he was doing, right? What I'm saying is there's experts out there, right? If you want somebody to come in, if if you're saying you don't have time for this, okay, I understand that. Bring somebody in who does this for a living and they will take this off your hands and all you have to do is you say what kind of leaders do you want, and an expert will come in and make this happen for you.
Ricky Baez:
That will save you a lot of headaches, because, although you should leave, put leeway for your employees to make mistakes and have them learn from it it's not necessarily the same from the executive leadership putting something like this, because if they make a mistake with this, it will cost them talent. Talent will jump ship, especially the talent that has high caliber and that other people are courting them. We cannot afford to make a mistake here. So bring somebody in from the outside who can help you, especially exactly how you said, pete, what separates your organization right, it's four corner resource from everybody else. It's exactly what you said. You don't just look for somebody to bring them on board and then cash a paycheck. You want to make sure that your client has somebody that's going to be with them for the longest time, right? Not looking five minutes in front of you, but five months, five years in front of you, and that is the kind of a thought process that separates the professionals from the amateurs. Who learned it on YouTube.
Pete Newsome:
Great, I love it. And look, ricky, we have a number of examples in this blog article that I encourage everyone to read. We won't go into them now, but it's got some tools that we recommend. It has some examples of great organizations who've done very well with this, and it has some mistakes to avoid. Now I do want to touch on the mistakes just briefly and run through those, because so far, I think you're giving a pretty good grade on this blog that we have. So, not spending time and energy on succession plan Well, we already have identified that that's a mistake. Right, you have to do it. Not including the full leadership team. So what's your take on that? Excluding some individuals something to avoid?
Ricky Baez:
Huge mistake. Huge mistake Because here's why Because they're a leader in your organization. Somebody above them thought something in these folks that said they're going to be a great leader. If you're going to trust them with that kind of responsibility, why would you not trust them to give input on the future of the organization? Correct, they have an input. The more eyes, from a leadership perspective, you have on this, the better position you're going to be on getting it right, because you're attacking one issue from 20 different points of view. The more leaders are involved, the better.
Pete Newsome:
Perfect, and one of the things that's on this is to avoid is having a small pool of perspective leaders, and one of the themes when we do these podcasts you never really know where we're going to end up. Right, we have a starting point, but the finish line sometimes looks entirely different, and one of the themes I think through our conversation today has been there's value in looking internally and there's value and necessity to look externally, so you have to do both if you're really going to do it right, and that's a point we wanted to make in this blog article. Hopefully it came across, but that's just coincidentally, that's been a recurring theme through our conversation today.
Ricky Baez:
So I've been waiting for you to hit on that one, because having a small pool of potential candidates, that is the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.
Ricky Baez:
Right, because you have to make a decision. Right, if you have a small pool of potential candidates, then what are you doing to get them ready? How are you hiring? Right, because this goes back to the hiring piece. Right, if you see somebody, if you're interviewing somebody that is perfect for the current role, but they're years away from being a leader, you have to make a decision about what. If you hire that person, how much is it going to cost and time and money because time is money to get that person trained up. So you have to know what that is, what that threshold is, and maybe put a succession plan in place where there is an MIT, a manager in training program that gives people the fundamentals of leadership to bring them to the very bottom, at the least, the minimum fundamentals that they need to be in the succession planning process. That is crucial right there, to make sure that you make a decision how you want to train and how much money you want to spend to bring them up to speed later on.
Pete Newsome:
I love it. There's more in the blog. There's tools listed, there's other resources. Rick, you will put your contact information in the show notes and, of course, the link to the article, but I think that's a great place to stop because we've really put a bow around it. I didn't say our other phrase today. I avoided it. We'll skip it for one week, but this has been great. Thank you so much If you've listened this far. Thanks for joining us, as always, and we'll talk to you very soon. Be back next week, ricky, thank you.
Ricky Baez:
Thank you very much, Pete. Have a good one, folks. See you in a few.