DS Cohen & Associates
Going beyond Mini Me succession planning
Picture a talent review. A vice president makes the case for her pick. “She reminds me of myself at that age. Same drive, same instincts. She thinks the way I think.” Heads nod. The name slides into the ready now box.
Nobody in that room believes they just made a biased decision. They believe they spotted talent. What they did was clone it.
I have sat in these rooms and I will say plainly what most succession plans are. They are not risk management. They are a mirror with a nine box drawn on it.
Nine percent. That is the share of CHROs who told Gallup they strongly believe the nine box works for their organisation, even though 64 percent of large companies use it. Name another management tool that survives on that kind of endorsement.
The grid survives because it asks nothing of the people filling it in.
How the mirror works
Mini Me succession is rarely deliberate, which is exactly why it lasts. We trust people who look, talk and think like us. We give them visibility, sponsorship, stretch assignments and time with executives. Then, at the talent review, we point to all that experience as proof of their potential. The system manufactures its own evidence. People are chosen because they had the opportunities, and they had the opportunities because they were chosen.
Add a second confusion: we mistake performance for potential. CEB found that only about 15 percent of high performers have what it takes to succeed in more senior roles. Benson, Li and Shue studied salespeople across 214 firms. The best sellers were the most likely to be promoted, and their new teams’ sales then fell. Springsteen wrote a song about living on Glory Days. Many succession slates are built on them.
Then the confusion turns costly. The same researchers followed a large retailer where women earned higher performance ratings than men but potential ratings 5.8 percent lower. That one judgment explained up to half the gender gap in promotions. The women went on to outperform their forecasts. Female managers made the same error. The bias was not in the managers. It was in the word “potential.”
And look at who gets chosen. A consumer goods company compared its 20 designated high potentials with 123 senior executives. The chosen ones were more cautious, more dutiful and more eager to please than the leaders they were meant to replace. The company had found its best subordinates and called them its future.
Managers do not pick the people who will lead best. They pick the people who make managing easiest.
Change the question
Stop asking a leader, “Who is your successor?” That question anchors the answer to the incumbent. Ask instead, “What will this role demand five years from now, and who has shown they can do it?” If the business is going somewhere new, why would the ideal successor look like the person who led it here?
Then separate three things talent reviews routinely blend: performance, potential and readiness. Break potential into parts you can observe: how fast someone learns, how they handle complexity, whether they want the bigger job, what derails them under pressure. This is the old can do and will do distinction pointed at the future. And make ready now mean something. If the chair were empty tomorrow, would you appoint this person? Show me the evidence. Tell me what evidence is missing.
Take the pen out of one hand
No single manager should decide who has potential. Calibration panels that include peers from other functions and the manager’s own manager should challenge every name. When someone says “she isn’t ready,” ask what she needs to demonstrate. When someone says “he has executive presence,” ask what behaviour that describes. When someone says “I’m not sure she’d fit,” ask whether we are talking about values or simply a style that feels unfamiliar.
Open the door as well. Schneider Electric stopped requiring manager approval to explore internal roles and dropped its three year tenure rule. Nearly nine in ten employees now use its Open Talent Market. But self nomination alone rewards the confident. Exley and Kessler found that men and women with identical test scores rated themselves 61 and 46 out of 100. Open the door, then go and find the people who did not walk through it.
For every critical role, build a challenge slate alongside the obvious successors: credible people with different paths, functions and styles, measured against the same criteria. This does not lower the bar. It checks whether the bar was built around the people who usually clear it.
And build a second ladder. An expertise track of equal standing keeps your best specialist from being pushed into management, failing and leaving.
Audit the pipeline, not the slate
Follow the population from eligibility to nomination to stretch assignments to slate to appointment. Where it narrows is where talent disappears. Compare potential ratings with later performance by group. If one group keeps beating the forecast, your process is underrating them.
Then make it someone’s job. Research from Cornell and Penn State found that managers who promote their people attract about 12 percent more applications from top performers. Put talent exported on every manager’s scorecard. Let the CEO ask why the same three names appear on every slate.
One question for your next succession meeting: if the incumbent had never met any of these candidates, would the slate look the same?
If that question makes the room uncomfortable, you have found the Mini Me. Your next leader may not look, think or lead like the person in the chair. If the future is different, they should not.
David S. Cohen, Ed.D., is founder and principal of DS Cohen & Associates and author of The Talent Edge, Inside the Box and Selecting the Best.
