GUEST POST

Mollie Lombardi, Senior Research Analyst, Aberdeen. Mollie is a researcher and analyst in the human capital management field,with a primary focus on how organizations enable business success by unleashing the potential and productivity of their workforce. Mollie studies both workforce and talent management processes and technologies and how organizations put them to use to create positive results for employers and employees, and seeks to understand the organizational best practices that create real business impact and change. Her passion is helping both business and human capital leaders understand how to fuse business and talent strategies and processes to achieve breakthrough performance.

There is a lot of talk of sustainability today. With global unrest, talk turns to sustainable energy sources. With population booms in arid regions and cities, sustainable water sources become critical. And when what appears to be a recovering economy collides with a possible cresting wave of retiring baby boomers and concern about a generation of new workers who may be opting out of the typical corporate climb, the topic is leadership sustainability.

The word itself is about the capacity to endure in a way that meets the needs of multiple stakeholders, and in business it requires the responsible management of talent resources, as well an organizational mindset that doesn’t sacrifice long-term competitiveness for short-term gains.

Talent management practitioners at leading companies have created a strong succession planning process that helps identify, prepare, and track the leadership talent destined for key organizational roles. Aberdeen research on Succession Management published in July 2010 found that 75% of companies had some sort of succession strategy in place, up from just 53% in 2008. This increased focus is good, but what does it really take to create a strategy that can build a sustainable pipeline of future leaders?

The July study found that among top performing companies, 47% indicate that identifying high-potential talent early in their career was a top action, making it the most frequently cited activity in support of succession planning, followed by 44% indicating the establishment of a longer-term workforce planning capability and 27% calling for a culture shift based on sharing talent.

Given the ways in which top performers are approaching succession, the parallel drawn between succession and the notion of sustainability becomes even more apt. Indeed, many of the core principles that have defined the environmental movement come into play with regard to the workforce:

• Long-term mindset: How do we change our thinking to better meet the needs of the future without sacrificing short-term prosperity?
• Responsible resource utilization: How do we make use of all of the resources at our disposal in a way that maximizes their long-term utility?
• Thinking globally: How do we tear down the provinciality that prevents us from tackling our issues and putting our resources to use on a global scale?

Succession and sustainability are also about gaining a deeper understanding of what the business requires, the talent within the organization, and mapping the two together to identify gaps. It’s somewhat shocking to realize that 74% of top performers are able to identify roles that are critical to organizational success, as compared to just 27% respectively of the lowest performing organizations.  Even at the best companies, only 3/4 of them know what roles impact their success!  And 72% of those top performers have a process in place to identify who their high potential talent is, compared to just 23% of the lowest performing organizations. This journey to understand the roles that drive performance and identify the individuals capable of taking them on is critical to organizational success.

The story of one such journey is the topic of an upcoming presentation by United Airlines at the 2011 Aberdeen Human Capital Management Summit.  Cynthia Starz, Managing Director, Leadership and Organizational Development at United will share the process United undertook to develop talent profiles, shift senior leadership thinking about talent mobility, and where they could best grow and nurture future leaders.

Cynthia is joining a slate of amazing speakers and panel discussions taking place at the Summit, March 9-10 in New York City. If you’re looking for a mid-winter shot in the arm of inspiration from an amazing group of smart, driven and innovative colleagues, I hope you can join Cynthia and me there. We look forward to answering your succession questions in person and discussing how you’re building a sustainable workforce.