By cranking up others development to meet your business needs, big or small, not just for right now, but for the future, you will find payoffs, big-time. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

1. Building Relationships
   By ensuring that you have informally built good relationships with every one of your team, you will have a head start when developing the intelligence needed for effective succession planning. This is not just about the business, it is about aligning with whatever is important to each individual and showing an interest in them.

2. Create a Vision
   Clearly understanding what good looks like is the first stage of planning for the future. Taking the time out to develop this is well worth the effort and provides a marker against which all decisions, people or otherwise are made. If possible, involve as wide a range of people in this activity.

3. Right People, Right Place, Right Time - Ignore Names
   Once you have your vision, deciding who is need, when and where becomes easier. It important that you focus on the facts rather than the emotion first, so that you ignore individuals in this assessment. You can fit people in afterwards, as long as they will have the capability to deliver your vision for your business. Some may be a work towards.

4. Consistent Performance
   By considering your key people, their aspirations and expectations for the future, you will gain an insight of where your gaps might come and then you can start planning to avoid problems. This will enable you to provide for anticipated change and start developing others to cover at least. This also helps when changes happen unexpectedly.

5. Confidence Grows
   As individuals are involved in the possibilities for their future, without over-promising, they start to want more. They appreciate learning and developing as they see what might unfold for them. As they learn and experience more, their confidence builds and they want stretching.

6. Its Cultural
   As your communication processes involve everyone in Succession Planning, a groundswell of positivity generates a shift in your business culture. Your people start to realise that there is more to this than a job its building their feelings of self worth and future. This culture becomes just the way we do things around here and new employees commence at a higher, different level.

7. Many Winners
   As you start to build the capacity of those around you, there is a lot that can be delegated safely as a development opportunity, suitably supported and coached. You crate space to do the more important things in your role. They develop and build confidence. With confidence comes improved customer relationships, greater efficiencies. So managers, employees, the business and ultimately stockholders all are winners.

8. Time Efficient
   There is a certain amount of workload involved in creating a Succession Planning process. Once these initial stages are completed, only a small amount of time outside normal activities is required. In fact, with the added skills and development of your people, far greater efficiency and effectiveness results.

9. Manages Performance
   Using a Succession planning process sits very appropriately with Performance Management. As potential has been identified, the next steps in development are constructive and clear. The individual takes accountability for their own development and practically self-manages their performance.

10. Value-Creating
    By using management skills far more effectively, skilling up all the people in the business and creating seamless transitions when people move on, all improve business performance. Developing the latent potential of many of your people raises the bar for their performance it is just shifted up several notches. And ultimately with greater sales and efficiency, bottom line profit is maximised.

And with these ideas in place, you will create more effectiveness and involvement in your people - which can only be good.

Martin Haworth

Thanks for taking a look at me! I work with people to help them realise their potential and make the most of their life. I also help managers to get the very best from their people, to make their businesses, teams, departments, whatever, to be successful.

Usually this is through my 'Coaching Managers to Coach' workshops, delivered worldwide, which includes experiential and hot-seat coaching for all participants - a great, fun learning experience. Click the big green link panel on any of the website pages!

There are over 1000 hints and tips, and that doesn't include the blog, which is updated pretty well daily, if not more often!

With a background in team management of groups from 6-300 and a great ICF coaching accreditation, I reckon I'm almost unique in my experience and training to make this work for you.

So take a look, checkout my other articles and maybe even set the blog page as a favourite:-) And, you know, if you want to get in touch, give me a call. I'll talk about almost anything, but I love helping people make the best of their workplace. Or e-mail me through the contact page on the site.

Ooops, I nearly forgot, I do manager soft-skills analysis with a programme called 'Intercept' and if you just want some one-to-one business coaching, I do that too. There's also a button on the navigation bar on the website pages for that too.

Fees, well, let me see, can I say that we can work something out? That's the way I work.

Thanks for happening by!

Martin