| | DECEMBER 2023MANAGEHRMAGAZINE.COM8SUCCESSION PLANNING IN THE NEW "CAREER NAVIGATION" WORLDBy Federico Demarin, Chief People Officer, Latin America, GroupMIn MyOpinionFederico DemarinSuccession planning has been around for several decades now, and with good and bad applications, it is still a prevailing talent management practice for medium and large companies.In its narrow use, it is the process with which companies identify potential successors for management and leadership positions. Clearly, this view only focusses on the company's interests around business continuity and the costs associated with recruiting leaders, which could have a significant impact in personnel costs for companies with high turnover.Broadening the perspective, it is also a way to understand where your leadership talent sits, your pipeline, though for this companies also need to enrich it with a definition of what leadership talent means in that organization in particular, and that is no easy task. When it comes to "potential for leadership", most companies struggle to define it, understand it, and apply it consistently. The usual scenario is to have a broad definition of leadership competencies with elevated words about what it means to lead, while in practice people get promoted due to their individual performance, mostly driven by hard results and technical skills. When this happens, the actual success model gets projected into the future, once those being promoted use the same criteria to identify potential to lead in others. Even more rare is to have companies clearly explaining what would happen after they start a leadership path, getting involved into "people" issues they thought belonged to the HR department.Research shows the new generations are less interested in set paths, as they prioritize exploration and choices. The concept of career navigation addresses this idea, as different routes for development which could include side moves and drastic changes. A good analogy would also be a climbing wall, with multiple possible routes with different difficulty and effort levels, so each individual could define the balance between progress speed and stretch, understanding they could grow in different ways depending on that combination. Needless to say, this poses a very different challenge for companies trying to manage talent. While the "set path" concept demands clarity and commitment though decisions and budgets, the "navigation" would require the search of alternatives and risk taking
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