WisdomNet

WisdomNet White Paper Series May, 2006

Advanced Succession Planning

Next Generation Practices for Ensuring Your Organization's Future

Copyright 2006, WisdomNet, Inc., All Rights Reserved. This white paper may be distributed in its entirety, with appropriate copyrights attached. Any reproduction, reference, republishing or other use without written consent and credit to the authors is strictly prohibited.

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About the Author

Brian Wilkerson is the co-founder and CEO of WisdomNet. He serves as a strategist and consultant to a number of large global companies and has worked extensively with Fortune 500 clients to help them solve their toughest problems and capitalize on the greatest opportunities. His previous experience includes leadership roles in global corporations such as Level 3 and Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and extensive work in international development. He has extensive experience in leading strategy development and operational improvement efforts across a range of clients in both domestic and international settings, with a particular emphasis on making strategy successful through the combination of operational excellence and human capital management. Mr. Wilkerson speaks extensively on a range of topics such as business strategy and strategic planning, innovation, global outsourcing, and talent management for organizations such as The Conference Board. The press also regularly seeks him out for his insight on a number of topics and he has been quoted in diverse publications ranging from the New York Times to the Denver Business Journal. He has also published a number of articles and book chapters. Mr. Wilkerson is actively involved in the community, with a particular emphasis on social justice issues. His educational background includes a Masters Degree in Environmental Planning from University of Colorado and a Bachelors Degree in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati, as well as a Certificate in Human Resource Strategy and Practice from the Human Resource Planning Society.

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Table of Contents

About the Author .................................................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 3 Succession Planning Evolution .............................................................. 6 Next Generation Approaches and Tools .................................................. 8 Integrated View ......................................................................... 8 Talent Pools .............................................................................10 Early Warning .......................................................................... 11 Advanced Workforce Planning ..................................................12 Decision Analytics ....................................................................13 Organization Spiderweb ............................................................15 Selection and Transition Focus ................................................16 Knowledge Mapping .................................................................17 Systems Evolution ...................................................................18 Summary ..............................................................................................21 References ............................................................................................22 Company Information ............................................................................24

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Introduction
Over the past five years, the focus on succession planning in organizations has dramatically increased. WisdomNet defines succession planning as "an executive led talent planning process focused on creating a pool of high performance leaders to meet the strategic needs of the organization". It has been one of the fastest growing service areas in the Human Capital consulting arena and seminars related to the topic have seen record attendance. There are a number of reasons for this increased focus, all of which relate to the critical link between people and the performance of the organization. From a strategic perspective, more organizations are recognizing that there are both leaders and individual contributors that are critical to their performance. Succession planning is no longer focused on just the "top jobs" but rather more broadly at who in the organization is critical to doing what the organization needs to do. In some organizations, this means front-line individual contributors with critical skills in addition to key leaders. Many organizations have experienced turnover in these types of positions and the ensuing disruption and some have the potential to see it before it happens. Most are also recognizing that the skills required to ensure high performance are not easy to acquire or develop. The talent market has become increasingly tight, and while training internal staff can give important foundations, there is no substitute for experience in the role. Executive roles in particular have become increasingly complex, and the impact of bad hires or bad decisions from those hires can have a much more significant effect on the organization. Consequently, organizations are increasingly looking at ways they can get ahead of the curve and avoid disruption through more effective succession planning. In addition, many organizations are seeing the tip of the muchheralded wave of baby boomer retirement. While the economic challenges of the last 8 to 10 years delayed some of this activity, the pace of retirements has increased in most organizations, and almost all see the potential for significant departures in the next 3 to 5 years. In fact, a sampling of WisdomNet clients showed that most anticipated 50-70% retirement among their management ranks within that timeframe. This is an unprecedented level of turnover, and even if it is at the far end of that time horizon, it will

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have a significant impact on the workforce. Just as important as the sheer numbers is the level of experience and perspective that will be lost when this generation leaves the workforce. Many of these retirees will be in very senior positions and will have a long tenure within the organization relative to the remaining workforce. Even if the fundamental skills in these positions can be replaced, the loss of knowledge, experience, judgment, relationships, and perspective will have a significant impact on organization performance. Numbers involved in the turnover and the experience levels are just two factors among many that are driving the interest in succession planning. Other factors such as the increased demand for highly skilled workers and leaders bring uncertainty into the organization and provide the potential for disruption in performance if someone is suddenly lured away. One need only look at the legal battles between Google and Microsoft over key talent in China to understand the stakes and level of focus in this area. In addition, issues such as global security, immigration reform, regulatory reform, and a host of others all impact how the organization looks at talent and the increasing focus on succession planning. This focus is not confined to the private sector as public sector organizations face many of the same dynamics and challenges. Effective succession planning yields a number of benefits to the organizations that put the appropriate focus on it. These include:

Ensuring continuity and minimizing disruption - the

organization stays focused on achieving its objectives

Providing the groundwork for achieving future goals and

improving the performance of the organization

Increasing the effectiveness of leadership development

investments

Delivering higher performance now as targeted development

increases the skills of staff for their current positions

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Providing more challenging development opportunities and

career path opportunities

Providing a platform for preparing the organization for the

future and driving the changes in the culture and operations needed in order to be successful As more organizations have recognized these potential benefits, the practice of succession planning has evolved. This white paper explores that evolution and looks at a number of new strategies that organizations are employing to ensure effective succession planning.

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Succession Planning Evolution

Over the past fifteen years, the practice of succession planning has evolved significantly. Succession planning is no longer a matter of tapping someone on the shoulder for that C-level opportunity and creating an "heir apparent". Many organizations have realized the dangers of such an approach. This is just one of a number of evolutions in succession planning that are illustrated in the diagram below.
From:
Annual Event

To:
On-going Process

Selection of "Replacements"

Creation of Leadership Pool

Focusing on Senior Levels Only

Extending into Mid- and Lower-level Management Part of Integrated Strategy for Managing Talent

Stand-alone Program

ROI in the Future

ROI Now and in the Future

Today, succession planning is a much more dynamic process that is focused on securing the future talent of the organization. It reaches across levels and boundaries, and is focused on creating a pool of talent that is available to meet the needs of the organization at multiple levels, regardless of the genesis for that need. Most organizations have started looking at succession planning as parallel processes- one focused on addressing immediate succession needs, with the other focused on ensuring an adequate pool of talent available to address needs as they evolve. The diagram below illustrates this parallel approach.

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Replacement Planning Process

Identification of Strategies to Close Gaps

Critical Needs Assessment

Gap Analysis

Development Activities Leadership Profile

- Rotational Assignments - Leadership Training - 360 Degree Feedback

Selection and Transition

Succession Pool Development

Long Term Needs Assessment Selection and Monitoring of Pool Participants Career Development and Goal Setting

Improved Readiness Improved Performance

As the diagram illustrates, both processes involve understanding needs and employing strategies to address these needs across different time horizons. As the diagram also notes, addressing succession needs is not merely a matter of recruiting or training. A wide range of strategies can be employed to address succession challenges. For example, when someone leaves a position, organizations do not automatically just seek to replace that position. Some look at the turnover as an opportunity to reorganize the way work gets done and create a more efficient organization. Many look at a succession event as an opportunity to actually increase the skills or redefine the role associated with that open position to give the organization even more capability. Since most organizations today "run lean", they look to maximize every talent decision they make, and not just ensure that the boxes on the organization chart are filled. This evolution in succession planning has led to a number of new techniques and tools focused on improving the effectiveness of this process. The next section describes tools that we have either seen our clients successfully deploy or have helped them develop and use effectively.

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Next Generation Approaches and Tools

WisdomNet has worked with an extensive list of clients in both the public and private sector to help them increase the effectiveness of the succession planning approaches. In addition, we have done a number of speaking engagements across the US, outlining innovative approaches to this topic. Through this work, we have seen a number of innovations and advances in succession planning, and have been responsible for creating a number of them ourselves. Some of these are as simple as different ways of thinking about the succession challenge, while some are specific tools or techniques that help organizations address succession planning. An overview of some of the key approaches and tools follow.

Integrated View
Organizations are increasingly focused on making talent decisions more objective and based on data. This is in stark contrast to the informal or instinctive nature of many talent decisions in the past and is a recognition that talent decisions are no different than other business decisions they should be based on data and facts rather than intuition or extraneous factors. For example, no successful company would decide to build a new facility simply because the drawings looked nice or they felt like they needed it. The company would look at costs, potential use, capital funding vehicles, anticipated return on investment, projected future growth needs, lease market data, and a host of other factors. More and more organizations are looking at talent through the same lenses, which requires both increased data and dramatically improved access to this data. Increasingly organizations are moving towards some sort of Talent Profile to aggregate this data and associated decisions. The talent profile brings all of the information about a person together into one place where it can be used by the appropriate decision makers. This often involves pulling data from multiple sources and systems and has in the past generally ended up as some sort of binder of information. But this was generally a labor-intensive and time-consuming process for HR and support staff. Even a simple decision such as the appropriate candidate to fill an internal opening could involve getting past performance from one system, the candidate resume from another, basic employee information from a third, and past training and development from a fourth. This doesnt even account for the evaluations
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Talent decisions are no different than other business decisions they should be based on data and facts rather than intuition or extraneous factors.

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that might reside on a managers PC or worse, are not documented at all. Today, organizations are leveraging technology to help aggregate all of this data in one place and give them instant access to a comprehensive picture of their talent. This talent profile functionality has become increasingly popular because of the power of the data and the reduction in administrative burden (see example below).

One of WisdomNets clients, for example, migrated from paperbased to electronic talent profiles to improve efficiency and refocused the efforts previously given to compiling data to improving analytics. Among a number of efforts in this area, the
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client and WisdomNet created objective scorecards for determining who qualified as High Potentials that were based on the various data points collected in the talent profile and eventually automated the collection and analysis of this information to create automated initial identification of high potentials from among their global workforce of more than 10,000.

Talent Pools
The concept of creating a pool of High Potentials in an organization is almost as old as the practice of succession planning itself. A pool is nothing more than a group of individuals with common characteristics. But WisdomNet has seen many of our clients dramatically expand their use of pools to better identify, track, and manage various cohorts of staff. For example, one of our clients separated their high potentials into pools based on what level of potential they had. This particular client defined this as how many levels up in the organization they could potentially move (and of course staff could move into different pools over time). Other clients have separated candidates who are candidates for replacing current managers, but dont necessarily qualify as high potentials in the organization. Each of these pools has specific development strategies associated with them and are tracked as cohorts in terms of progress against development, investment and return, retention, and a number of other factors. WisdomNet has helped a number of our clients take this concept one step further by blurring the lines between internal and external pools. We have seen that the right candidate to address a particular talent challenge could be made up of an internal resource, an external hire, or even some sort of contingent labor solution depending on required timing, investment, criteria weightings, etc. Many of our clients have found that they can make better succession planning decisions by looking simultaneously at these various internal and external options and the relative cost, benefit, and likelihood of success for each option. This of course requires thinking about a number of Talent Management processes such as recruiting (applicant management) and contractor management very differently, but it provides a significantly increased range of options for addressing talent challenges and a higher likelihood of successfully addressing them. In many cases, this type of blending of talent pools is done through Talent
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Management software with both the ability to track information about internal and external options and powerful search tools to hone in on the right solution for a particular talent challenge. Like other areas of the business, advances in decision support are helping companies sort through more data and make better decisions about talent.

Early Warning
One of the fastest growing trends in succession planning is the development of early warning mechanisms around potential talent issues. This includes significant focus on predictive turnover modeling. As an example, WisdomNet has built a Turnover Mapping TM tool that takes data from various sources and aggregates it into a profile of potential turnover in all parts of the organization. This can include employee and manager perceptions, flagging of particular conditions in the talent profile, third party retention assessment tools, past turnover trends, and others. The goal is to provide the organization early warning data about potential turnover issues and give them time to target the appropriate strategies to address it. This could include ramping up recruiting, targeted retention initiatives, or any number of strategies. The key is to be aware of the information early enough so that the organization can proactively address it.

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Other clients have begun to focus on a few critical sets of factors that tend to be predictors of turnover in their organization. For example, one global financial services company has begun to look at what they call Long-Term Hold by examining factors such as long-term incentive compensation (including vesting schedules), stock option exercise activity, tenure, level, and a host of other factors to target particular retention risks among critical talent, leadership and high potentials. Others have focused on job satisfaction measures or trends in key talent going to competitors. Many of these approaches are dependent on technology and the ability to aggregate and correlate significant amounts of data. Technology has also allowed a number of companies to move toward more automated detection of potential issues. For example, WisdomNets I-TMSTM software allows companies to set up e-mail alerts that notify key HR or leadership when particular conditions are met. This might be when a particular staff member is marked as a retention risk in the system and the system identifies that this person also does not have any potential backfills associated with them. This type of automated alert ensures that the organization maximizes the time available to deal with potential talent issues before they become real issues.

Advanced Workforce Planning

One of the fastest emerging trends is actually the linkage of succession planning to workforce planning. Certainly the discussions that typically take place between HR and business units around how many people do you need are nothing new. But this is just a shadow of the potential for workforce planning. Increasingly organizations are seeking to move to a more disciplined approach to workforce planning that is much more advanced. Some of this is related to the desire to get early warning data about potential needs, but it is just as much related to the desire on the part of organizations to better understand and better prepare for what they will need to meet their future goals. Many are starting to look at scenario modeling for the dependence of business goals on talent acquisition and retention. For example, one of our clients recently used advanced workforce planning to model the costs of different strategies for entering a new business line and the associated feasibility. As
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success in this new area was heavily dependent on the ability to acquire, develop, and retain the right talent, the company was able to balance cost considerations with likelihood of success to determine the right entry strategy. Workforce planning is evolving from an exercise in headcount planning to a comprehensive look at how to optimize talent. No longer is it an exercise in how many people will need to be recruited in a year, but rather a driver of strategies around recruiting, training, retention, workplace policies, contingent labor strategies, facility location, and even outsourcing. As an example, WisdomNets approach to workforce planning is groundbreaking and unique, and combines the organizations process architecture, required outputs, goals, systems infrastructure, headcount, skills, required service levels, costs, and a host of other factors into an empirical model that tells the organization exactly what they will need to meet their needs today and tomorrow. This includes suggestions on optimization (process automation and improvement, outsourcing options, appropriate contingent labor mixes, etc.) and the risk and return associated with each strategy. Already in use by both large corporations and government agencies, this approach and tool has allowed organizations to make the concrete link between people and performance and has given organizations the tools to empirically analyze what their workforce strategies should be (including succession planning).

Decision Analytics
As discussed above, advances in technology and decision support have enabled organizations to bring together more data and make better talent decisions. But just as important as the data is the analytics that are applied and more organizations are focused on improving these tools. Some examples have been discussed, such as objective criteria for determining high potentials, but the range of tools that have been developed and deployed over the past five years is significant. One element of this focus on decision analytics is an increase in tools for cost-benefit analysis around talent decisions. Organizations are increasingly looking at their various talent options using traditional cost-benefit-risk analysis. For example, a common
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decision in organizations is whether to fill an open position with an internal or external candidate. More organizations look at the cost of each option vs. the likelihood of success and the criticality of the position to the business rather than simply defaulting to promote from within policies or other non-objective decision criteria. This is symbolic of the overall trend towards more objective decision-making around talent. WisdomNet has helped a number of our clients take this a step further by developing Decision Trees associated with key talent decisions. These decision trees help document the factors that should be considered when examining particular talent decisions and also help ensure that the decision is based on data. An example appears below showing a simple decision tree for a situation where a high potential is being blocked by an incumbent from moving into a higher-level position. This is a simplified version for illustration purposes.
Replace vs. Retain

Replace vs. Retain Decision

Used when incumbent is blocking a HIPO, Future Leader, or Replacement Candidate who is ready for Succession

HIPO, Future Leader, or Replacement Candidate

Would the anticipated performance of the potential be higher than that of the incumbent?

YES

Is there another role available for the incumbent?

YES

Is incumbent interested in that role?

YES

Replace Incumbent

NO NO

NO

Keep Incumbent in Role

YES

Is strategic value of incumbent higher than that of potential?

Create Strategic Development Assignment for Potential

NO

Move Potential into Role

Create job share or Strategic Development Assigment for Incumbent

The decision tree walks the user through a series of criteria and suggests an appropriate strategy based on a particular situation. One of the key advantages of these tools is that they give line managers a process to make better decisions. This helps build

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the effectiveness of the managers and also helps ensure that key talent decisions in the organization are being made consistently and with the right factors, even when HR is not involved. Moreover, WisdomNet is also helping our clients automate these tools to provide suggested strategies to decision makers based on available data, these strategies can then be customized to fit the situation.

Organization Spiderweb
In the past, succession planning decisions have generally been targeted on finding the best candidate for the position that is in focus. For example, if a leader will soon be retiring, there is a significant effort put on evaluating the credentials of potential internal and external candidates to determine the best skills and fit. In most cases, however, minimal attention is paid to the ripple effects of a given decision. For example, if internal Candidate A is determined to be the best from a standpoint of skills, experience, and interest, what happens to the business unit that Candidate A will come from? Is there a ready replacement for Candidate A in their current role? Will critical business priorities suffer if Candidate A leaves their current role? If it were an external candidate, what would be the potential impact on internal candidates who were passed over? All of these considerations are getting greater attention in organizations. WisdomNet has helped a number of clients establish analytical approaches to manage this Organization Spiderweb. These approaches include how to analyze the downstream impacts of various succession options at not just the next level, but through multiple layers of the organization with the goal of choosing the option that optimizes overall organization impact. The diagram below illustrates a simple version of the type of criteria matrix that would be used in this type of decision.

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Areas of Business Impact

s e anc ship ion form elat Per /R er R nit ons ati tom ed U Cus lific ject Key Qua Pro in ead ess

Replacement Candidate A

Replacement Candidate B Critical Position Replacement Candidate C

Replacement Candidate D

While technology certainly makes this type of analysis easier, it is not a prerequisite for this strategy. To manage this decision process, we have seen a number of clients use spreadsheets or simply just document the appropriate criteria and discuss the decisions and potential impacts as a group. The key is that more and more organizations are looking at the far-reaching implications of a particular succession decision and guiding their strategies with this knowledge. Consequently, they are seeing much smoother transitions, higher success rates, and less organization disruption.

Selection and Transition Focus

Another shifting emphasis in succession planning is around selection and transition. As discussed above, organizations are focusing on more disciplined and objective criteria for determining how to address a particular succession need. They are also beginning to increase their focus on how they manage the actual transition in the organization. In many cases, so much effort was put into the selection process, that the transition activities were almost non-existent. The assumption was that if the right candidate was chosen, their success in their new role would be assured. Many organizations are realizing that this doesnt always reflect reality, and some have the scars from failed executives to prove it. Consequently, WisdomNet has seen a
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number of clients put in robust and structured transition experiences for internal and external successors. These experiences generally include combinations of training, mentoring and coaching, job experiences, relationship building, assessments, and a host of other factors related to ensuring job success. In all cases, the progress of the successor is closely monitored to ensure that they are both achieving the goals of the position as well as developing themselves appropriately. This process is being mirrored with both internal promotions and external hires, and generally includes both common experiences across all executives and specific development based on each executives unique needs. In our experience, these types of programs have dramatically improved the success rate of successors.

Knowledge Mapping
At a more tactical level, organizations are increasingly focused on minimizing the knowledge loss that often occurs when there is turnover in a position. The goal of these efforts is generally to translate knowledge in a staff persons head into organization knowledge through a process called Knowledge Mapping. This process helps organizations identify, prioritize, document, and disseminate knowledge that is critical to the operations of the organization. As can be imagined, the scope of this can be incredibly broad, and it is important that organizations focus their efforts on the components of each job that are critical and that cannot be intuitively figured out when someone steps in to a new role. For example, someone who comes from within an organization may already understand the budgeting process associated with that organization. However, they may not understand the regulatory filings that a particular department is responsible for if they did not come from that department. More importantly, they may be able to get the regulatory forms from a web site, but will they understand how to fill them out appropriately, or know the right person to get answers from at the regulatory agency? All of these are potential targets for knowledge mapping. The fundamental process for knowledge mapping includes:

Map knowledge required to execute a particular task / role /

job (focus on critical jobs or those with high time to proficiency or high turnover)
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Determine how knowledge will be captured and

disseminated (people, systems, procedures, etc.) focus on application of the knowledge and not just documentation

Determine how knowledge will be transferred in the event of

succession

Ensure that the knowledge transfer process is both

documented and practiced to ensure minimal disruption in the event of a transition Again, these efforts should focus on components that are difficult to learn, require time to attain proficiency, or critical to starting successfully in a job. Most organizations do not have the time for people to stop doing their jobs for weeks in order to document what they do. Our clients have found that setting realistic objectives for incremental progress around knowledge mapping, for example documenting one key aspect of the job per quarter, is the right approach for ensuring that they are prepared for a transition. In our experience, organizations must also look broadly at knowledge mapping, beyond just the formal, to ensure that they are capturing both the informal knowledge and important relationships critical to ensuring smooth transitions. For example, how do you ensure that a successor can get the same kind of response from IT around a critical job component when that response for the incumbent was based on a 15-year relationship between the incumbent and a key person in IT? If this is a critical component to ensuring continuity and minimizing disruption, it must be managed as part of this process. The same could apply to key customer relationships, relationships with government officials, key vendor relationships, and a host of others. The important thing to remember is to focus on the elements of a job that are critical to its performance. Not all of these techniques are appropriate for every organization. Each organization must look at where they are in terms of their needs, current level of data, systems support, management skills, and HR capability to determine what the right mix of
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advanced strategies would be. It is clear, however, that nearly every organization will need to consider some number of these approaches and techniques as the complexity of succession and talent challenges grow.

Systems Evolution
One enabler of more effective succession planning has been the evolution in HR systems. Succession planning software has existed for many years, but Integrated Talent Management Application Suites such as WisdomNets I-TMS TM software has allowed organizations to really take succession planning to the next level. In the past, tools in this area have primarily been focused on moving boxes around on organization charts. But the current generation of Talent Management applications goes far beyond this. Talent Management applications allow organizations to have a complete view of their talent, as well as a comprehensive picture of the organizations talent needs and challenges. This includes the ability to automatically aggregate the full picture of talent from the individual to the organization level. Now organizations can quickly tell who they have, what they can do, what they are doing today, and what their gaps might be. In addition, organizations now have powerful tools to look at trends, gaps, needs, and strategies for addressing succession planning challenges. All of this is possible from the integration of disparate data from disparate sources into a comprehensive picture of talent and the availability of tools to analyze this data at various levels. Increasingly, systems have become a foundation for effective succession planning and are a critical component of strategy in this area. WisdomNet has been a leader and innovator in this field, and our I-TMSTM application was the first fully-integrated Talent Management Suite on the market. We believe that organizations must manage Human Capital with the same clarity, discipline, and objectivity with which they manage other business assets. This requires the processes, systems, and most importantly, measures that clearly show the return on Human Capital. This was the genesis of our I-TMSTM tool, and it has helped a number of organizations increase the effectiveness of their Human Capital Management. Because we are consultants and solution delivery experts first, our technology aligns with proven practices in
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We believe that organizations must manage Human Capital with the same clarity, discipline, and objectivity with which they manage other business assets.

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succession planning and has the flexibility to accommodate the diversity of needs and approaches in this area. A number of the innovations discussed above have been built into our software as tools, and I-TMSTM is one of the most powerful tools in the market in this area. This includes integration to all the related Talent Management processes and linkages to our ground-breaking Workforce Planning tools.

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Summary
Succession planning is no longer the purview of large progressive companies. It has become a critical component of ensuring the success of both public and private sector organizations and a significant focus of organizations around the globe. In that vein, succession planning has evolved significantly from the back-room conversations about the next CEO. It has become an important part of how the organization does business and is both broader and deeper in its scope. Succession planning is often integrated into how leaders manage their teams, and has become an explicit consideration in many talent decisions. It has also become more complex as talent challenges increase and the criticality of talent to organization performance has also increased. This has led to a number of new approaches and tools for succession planning. These are focused on making the process more effective and accounting for the increased complexity of today's organizations. They include both new ways of analyzing risks and needs, as well as new strategies for addressing them. Increasingly, organizations are seeking ways to manage their talent assets in the same way they manage other organization assets and are coming up with more advanced ways to identify and address talent needs and challenges. Some of this has been made possible through the evolution of HR technology, but much of it comes from more advanced understanding of talent dynamics and how to approach these challenges. WisdomNet has been at the forefront of this evolution, and we have worked with our clients to develop a number of the tools and techniques described in this white paper. This is certainly not the end to the succession planning evolution. As technology advances and more organizations address impending retirements and talent shortages, there will be a need to continue to evolve the practice of succession planning. Many of the gaps that will be coming in the workforce will not be able to be solved by traditional strategies. Some estimates place the size of the coming generation in the workforce at half that of the current generation. This dynamic alone will force a fundamental revolution in how organizations acquire, manage, and develop talent, and many organizations will find their success or failure linked to their abilities in this area. WisdomNet will continue to be a leader and innovator in this field and to push the practice of both succession planning and Talent Management as a whole.
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References
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Wilkerson. Effective Succession Planning in Public and Non-Profit Organizations. WisdomNet White Paper, 2002, www.wisdomnet.net. Wilkerson. Effective Talent Management: Improving Business Results through People. WisdomNet White Paper, 2002, www.wisdomnet.net. Wilkerson. Technology for Strategic Partnering. HR.com March 2004.

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WisdomNet
The Knowledge To Drive Performance
TM

Company Information
WisdomNet creates innovative consulting and product solutions for the worlds best companies with a matchless level of expertise and service. WisdomNets extensive experience in strategy, operations, and human capital, coupled with our technology expertise allows us to generate real results for our clients. In addition, products such as the leading-edge Integrated Talent Management System (ITMSTM) help our clients maximize the performance of their strategic assets. WisdomNet can help you solve your toughest problems and capitalize on your greatest opportunities.

For additional information, please contact us at: E-mail: Website: Phone: Headquarters: info@wisdomnet.net www.wisdomnet.net 303.316.0381 WisdomNet, Incorporated 1600 Stout Street, Suite 1800 Denver, Colorado 80202

Succession Planning - Copyright 2006, WisdomNet, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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