Providing the Right Support

If we’re going to build profitable succession plans, creating advancement opportunities that are a bit outside the traditional approach of promoting (read: pushing) our best team members into supervisory or management roles primarily based on their technical expertise and work ethic will play a significant part in avoiding so many of the unintended consequences we’ve looked at to this point. The cost of a poor promotion can be huge, often impacting the entire business. But even when we can recognize the best role for each strong team member, we need to be just as intentional about providing them with the tools they’ll need, wherever they are, to excel and to continue as a key piece in that succession plan over the long haul!

In some cases, keeping a team member with a strong technical skill set in a role where they remain hands-on will be the best choice for them and the team they’re a part of. But to ensure they’re playing their best role in the overall succession plan, we need to develop a deliberate plan to help them pass their knowledge on. In so many situations, these are the folks who are considered to be “individual contributors” but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone - in any industry - who really does perform without any outside interaction! And when those “individual contributors” are the ones who hold that tribal knowledge of our processes, which is rarely totally captured in our operating instructions or job descriptions, it’s even more important for them to be able to pass it along! Just having great workers who stick with us is not a succession plan!

Just like the folks we promote into roles with formal leadership responsibility, even our most skilled do’ers need to be equipped with the tools to effectively communicate their expertise to anyone they’re working with or training. And while they may not have (or even want) the additional duties that come with being a supervisor or manager, underestimating how much profitability is killed when we only focus on their technical skills not only impacts our bottom line on a daily basis, it will prevent anyone we hope to pass those skills onto in the future from ever having a legitimate shot.

Creating and developing alternative career paths that are parallel to our supervisory and management roles not only helps build strong succession plans, it also rewards our best and most loyal team members for their effort. Whether we’re promoting someone into a role where they have direct responsibility for a team or one where they’re passing their technical expertise to the next generation, they need and deserve specific tools to help them be the best they can be. And just like they needed training and support to hone those technical skills, they’ll need the same for whatever new role they fill for us so the last profitability killer we’ll work through will be the cost of not providing the right tools for the job…