Succession Planning
Succession Planning: An Organizational “Insurance Plan”
Like other organizational capabilities, companies should manage talent to ensure sustainability and to achieve business goals and objectives. Today’s retirement trends and competitive labor market require new thinking about talent management. The predicted demographic shifts and massive waves of retirement predicted for the next 2 to 5 years will create an environment in which organizations will compete for talent. Organizations adopting a proactive succession planning strategy can address key gaps, reduce turnover, increase bench strength, and target training and development efforts.
Organizations face a variety of challenges related to the development and management of talent. It is important to develop individuals in an organization, but it is equally important to identify and plan for critical positions to ensure organizational success. Without this knowledge, it is difficult to ensure that key positions will be filled quickly with fully qualified candidates. A sound succession plan can address many key considerations: How do we ensure leadership stability? What are the critical positions in our organization? How do we identify, assess, and evaluate future leaders? What is the turnover rate for key talent? How do we know we have the skills to meet our business goals and objectives? Will valuable organizational knowledge be lost as talent leaves the organization? How should we measure successful succession planning?
Booz Allen's Services and Approach
Booz Allen uses an adaptive and collaborative approach to succession planning that:
- Develops succession planning priorities tailored to the organization’s needs
- Builds a customized approach aligned with business goals and objectives
- Aligns with other human capital practices to ensure a strong leadership cadre and a robust pipeline of future leaders
Booz Allen recognizes that every organization’s succession planning strategy is unique—based on goals, needs, challenges, culture, and existing programs and practices. Booz Allen uses a multi-disciplinary approach to leverage functional expertise in succession planning with industry domain expertise to customize a methodology appropriate for each organization. Our services include developing a succession planning strategy, implementing a succession planning process, assessing existing succession planning practices, and making recommendations for improvement.
Representative Client Engagements
Booz Allen has assisted many government and business clients in developing effective succession planning strategies:
- National Reconnaissance Office
- Internal Revenue Service
- US Air Force
- Department of Defense
- A private healthcare company
This page was last updated 22 June 2009.
