Steve Jobs’ resignation as Apple’s CEO has started yet another round of articles and blog posts about Apple and the succession plan it did or didn’t have. The Forbes blogs gave us “Apple Shareholders Criticize Post-Jobs Succession Plan,” for example. My personal favorite was the post on the other side of the debate. It was an Apple Insider post headlined “Steve Jobs resignation letter mocks idea that board had no succession plan.” Here’s the opening paragraph of that one.
In a public letter to Apple’s board resigning as chief executive, Steve Jobs wrote “I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple,” a barb that appears to mock the notion that Apple had no plans in place to account for his departure.
Many other articles also reduced the idea of “succession planning” to a shared idea of what name to write into the box marked “CEO” on the org chart. If that’s all you’ve got, you’re trusting way too much to luck. Picking the next CEO is important, but it’s only a part of a larger, more complex undertaking: talent development.
That starts with recruiting. You want people with the knowledge, skills, and potential to contribute to your company for decades. You also want to provide them with training and development opportunities so that you maximize their contribution.
Not everyone wants to climb the old management ladder. So talent development includes providing options for people interested in other kinds of careers. Oh yes, it also includes moves that are sideways and down, as well as up.
Talent development means providing opportunities for learning new skills and developing vision and judgment. That means assignments were people can make a few mistakes, learn from them, and grow.
Talent development should include an intense process of getting to know the people who will be important to your company. That’s the only way to make accurate assessments of their true potential.
At the conclusion of one part of the talent development process you will write a new name in the CEO box, but that’s not all there is. It’s just the tip of that proverbial iceberg, with most of the activity hidden beneath the surface.
