Marrying Career Development with Succession Planning 1 CPE

My ultimate goal in this course is to change from the Silos of succession planning responsibility typically found in our organizations to a merging of functions, championed by the CEO and managed by the professionals in Human Resources.

In many organizations the people responsible for helping staff with their personal career development are not the same as the people who are responsible for creating and managing the company’s succession plan. In part this is because succession planning is often considered only for the office of the CEO, or if expanded, it includes those at the C level in the organization. Thus, the key players are only the responsible members of the Board of Directors and relevant -level staff.

On the other hand, career development and talent management are usually the province of the Human Resources Department. Often there is no communication between these different areas of the company.

What we are striving to create by this suggested marriage is a culture that creates an exciting high performance collaboration through openness, transparency, trust and communication at all levels of the organization. Examples of how this is managed in some organizations includes looking at the clearly defined career ladders in police, fire, and some government organizations.

In addition, we look at examples from small business, as well as how people related to the CEO are fast-tracked – this is called nepotism. Attention is paid to typical career development strategies and succession plans. And, finally we offer several examples of how this marriage could be created. Of course there are rules and regulations that must be followed including the laws of your state, city, and possibly even your union. Some of these are negotiable and some are not. There are so many variations as to how to develop individuals and prepare for the succession of the executive team that each organization will have to make their own decisions based on knowing what they can and cannot do legally and culturally. In this course, I'm going to focus on what I consider possibilities and hopefully best practices.

I share some ideas about helping staff with their professional development, ways to plan succession and then suggestions as to how to put them together so that employees and the company have the best possibility of achieving the best for both. Some of what I am suggesting is quite unconventional, so again I strongly suggest you find out what your organization, state, country, etc., will allow you to do. To the extent you are free to make changes, you will have some strategies for retaining the best of your employees and helping them to develop into management and up the chain of command to upper management.

Prerequisites

No Advanced Preparation or Prerequisites are needed for this course. 

Learning Objective

• Discover the importance of working with champions at the highest levels of their organization in order to get buy-in for change.
• Explore how to develop several strategies for finding and fast-tracking key employees.
• Recognize typical and atypical succession plans.
• Explore how to develop your own marriage of career development and succession planning based on the needs and requirements of your own unique organization.

Last updated/reviewed: July 19, 2025