No matter what size, shape or form, most companies have caught on to the fact that having a strong and positive company culture is paramount to its long-term success. Why? Because it will help recruiters attract and retain top talent. And it doesn’t finish there; an attractive corporate culture is known to boost engagement among employees as well as improve productivity and performance.

What do we mean by “Company Culture”? 

Company culture is at the foundation of an organization’s identity. The combination of its attitudes, values, beliefs and goals is its make-up. It contains some key tenets that speak to how you operate and do business, in other words, the way you work. 

Let’s look at corporate identity as if it were a human being. Think about someone you know who has a fantastic, captivating personality. That person is great to be around, right? Similarly, companies where people can identify themselves and share the same ideals drive people to want to be there. There is willingness to wear the t-shirt and be proud to say where they work, to friends and family.

The big question: How can we build a super, strong corporate culture?

How can companies build a winning corporate identity, that drives its employees to boast about where they work and have little intent to leave? For the sake of this article, let’s assume you already have some core company values in place. Let’s also assume they are great and they truly reflect who you are as a company. Amazon has 14 of them, called Leadership Principles. They are a key success factor to driving the company forward, as well as building a strong corporate identity. For many companies 14 may be too many. Other companies only have 3. No matter how many, these values should be considered the underlying shades of the company’s personality. 

One of the hardest milestones for organizations to achieve however, is how to get them to “stick”. Getting words like “Customer Passion”, “Trust” and “Integrity” to become real, living values among all employees cannot be accomplished by sticking up posters on the office walls (especially not now!). Nor can it be considered a closed project by building a fancy, featured values page on your corporate web site. Rather-more, the real winning card is to build your company values into everything you do. Take every opportunity to divulge and indulge in them, integrating you company values into:

1. The Recruitment process. Ensure some of the questions you are evaluating candidates against are based on your company values. This allows future employees to get to know the corporate culture even before starting in their roles. It also allows your company to select talents not only for their experience, but also for their culture fit. Add the values as a standard part of your job descriptions, too.
2. Company webinars and events. Your corporate culture and values will start to stick if, like anything, you talk about them a lot. And in a positive way. Company events (eg. Christmas parties) can present opportunities to remind employees about your values, by using them as table names or creating games or quizzes around them. 
3. Team building workshops. Where better to be proactive in divulging knowledge of your Core Values than during team building exercises?! Team building is all about bonding with your colleagues, having fun and identifying common beliefs with each other. It is therefore an excellent playground to learn, understand and embrace your company values.
4. The performance evaluation process. While you may want to keep your traditional measures performance, consider how well people are performing against your values too. Essentially, people want to know how to perform based on what their company considers important. Your organization clearly demonstrates the importance it gives to its corporate culture, by measuring how aligned people are to it. 
5. Growth plans. Similar to the performance evaluation process, encourage teams to recognize and embrace your corporate culture by building the values into employees’ growth plans. See here a related article on building an Extra Mile culture to enable growth.
6. Employer Branding efforts. Many people believe that employer branding has the sole aim to attract external talent. It is in fact also confirmation or a reminder of who you are to your current employee base. When it comes to divulging information about your company culture both internally and externally, make sure you regularly update your social media channels (LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook etc.). Consider different types of updates. Short posts, articles, videos and other, more innovative techniques that all speak to who you are as an organization.
7. Sponsorship. Ask your senior managers and create company ambassadors to support and sponsor HR in their efforts to drive engagement among employees. Tactics such as naturally name dropping the values at the right moment during conversations is very effective.

Final thoughts

Each company culture is different, as it has unique goals and probably has an array of unique personalities too. An important element for creating a positive work culture is to ensure each and every employee is represented and accounted for. This is what your company culture should achieve; bringing your employees together and sharing the same goals. 

In short, quoting back to the “human being theory” above, owning a solid, attractive company identity and culture is like being a people magnet. People will happily stay around that magnet and willingly do as much as they can for them. Not a bad hand for driving a successful, profitable company

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Escape rooms are theatrical games that, in the past 10 years, have become effective team-building exercises, as well as a fun past-time among friends. They have taken off around the world and will likely pick up from where they left once they are able to reopen their doors, (post-pandemic permitting). Their growth has been explosive: recent data tells us there are over 3,000 escape games in Europe and around 14,000 worldwide.

Part of their success is thanks to the fact they are suitable for people of all ages and genders. They also give the unique opportunity to practice teamwork and problem-solving, as well as being an immersive and fun experience.

But aside from their surface identity as a cleverly constructed past-time, Escape rooms have the ability to teach us some valuable life lessons! Here are the top 10:

1. Start from a position of ignorance

At work or in our personal lives, our unconscious biases often get the better of us. We tend to cut to the chase, listen little and skip some potentially very important, game-changing details along the way. When you walk into the escape room for the first time, you understand you have had no way of learning anything about the situation in front of you beforehand. This teaches you to take a fresh, “from scratch” approach to what you are looking at, reading, listening to, or simply taking in your surroundings, which allows you to see the big picture and make calculated decisions rather than rash ones.

2. Team work

We always talk about team play, right? But how often can you say you have successfully achieved something thanks to a real, collective collaboration within a group? Escape rooms are never a one-player game. Without A, B, C and D, you would never have won: A did the maths, B had uncanny intuition, C kept us together and thinking straight and D asked the right questions. The game teaches us that no one person can be A, B, C and D and that we should therefore not try to get through things alone. And don’t let others try to get through things alone either. You are a piece of a puzzle that is needed. Especially during the toughest moments people should use each other’s skills.

3. Sharp Eyes

The game also teaches us to keep our eyes sharp open for new clues. This is because we are in “full focus mode” for the hour. We are alert and searching. It is thanks to this approach that we are able to quickly find, solve and jump for joy, before moving to the next intrinsic clue. What if we applied that approach to everyday life?! Keep our eyes sharp open for new opportunities that otherwise you may miss out on, whether those are work, friend, family or travel related.

4. Focus and Resilience

Escape rooms are cleverly designed to boggle our brains. Many of the clues are highly complex and require focus, time and patience (unless you simply get lucky!). By applying these three essential skills we learn to be resilient and relentlessly keep on at the challenge at hand until we finally crack it! Oftentimes in life, the challenge is a hard one to solve, leading us to get angry with it or give up. Perhaps an extra lesson here is to first accept the situation for what it is and then take an objective, determined and optimistic approach to overcome it.

5. Embrace our fears of failure

A winner’s approach to solving an Escape room is often through trial and error. In other words, keep trying potential solutions until they get it right. In real life, however, we do not give ourselves the same bandwidth. We are hard on ourselves and have somehow wrongfully learned that failure is bad. It is frustrating, but it is not bad. Failure must often necessarily happen before achieving success, don’t you think? Otherwise we would all go about life reading the theory on things that have already been done and then applying that theory to real life. How boring. And where’s the innovation?

6. Leave it. Come back later

You are likely to find some clues in Escape rooms too early on, meaning you cannot solve them because they require more information, more pieces to the puzzle that you have yet to find. In this scenario, without pointlessly racking your brains to solve immediately, the right thing to do is to leave it be for the moment, park it, and come back later when you have the 360°. Again, this kind of situation can occur in real life, where we may not be able something, no matter how hard we try. Perhaps something is missing, such as knowledge, experience, a tool, an essential piece of information. So we should do like we do in the game: If something is not working, leave it for a while and come back later with fresh eyes or the missing puzzle piece. 

7. If you need help, ask for it

The chance to ask for help a few times during the hour plays an integral part of the game. It is perfectly normal to feel stuck. If you never feel stuck, it likely means that it is too easy and therefore, again, boring. Similar to fear of failure itself, we seem to have picked up somewhere that asking for help is a sign of weakness or incompetence, however the wisest of us know that we should ask for help where we are missing knowledge. That is how we learn. 

8. Know your strengths

This is linked to teamwork. Once you’ve played an escape room a few times, you will have got to know who you are within the group, what you are good at and consequently what you offer to the table, at least within the context of the game. What role do you play in real life? Are you a leader? A Questioner or an Upholder? Are you the quiet one who never speaks until you pop up with the solution? Perhaps the game itself has given you an insight to discovering your hidden talent for deep analysis? In any case, self-awareness around your strengths, your ability to learn and what your future potential strengths could be, all play a very important role in self-improvement.

9. Know your kicks

Some Escape rooms are more fun for some than for others, depending on what you personally find fun. A murder mystery? A prison escape? Saving someone? Pure enigma? By the time you’ve done a few, you will know what you enjoy over all and in turn what motivates you the most. The moral of this story is that what you enjoy the most is the thing that keeps you coming back for more. Even when times are tough, the passion you keep for that thing, fuels you and keeps your momentum going. Perhaps your kick is not the type of game you are playing, but rather overcoming a challenge, being with the people you like the most, or the learning experience.

10. Have fun

Of course we cannot forget one of the greatest Escape room lessons, for any journey that you decide to take, remember to have fun along the way!

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You may feel differently about real Tequila, but it is rather common that if you and your friends do have a shot, there is an unsaid ritual: Boom. Done. It was fast, really bad, but somehow you feel like you’ve already achieved something. High-five! And that’s why I’ve decided to call my moment of “psych-up”, Tequila Shots. And get this: real Tequila has nothing to do with it (fortunately).

So a Tequila Shot, figuratively speaking, is that prep-moment, a mantra or ritual that works for you, usually done before a competition, an important speech, a difficult task, and so on. You mentally prepare yourself for it and consequently your self-conviction tells you will win or succeed. Very motivating indeed.

Some Examples

Prior to the big moment, whatever it might be, commonly known psych-up moments are intense breathing, a dance, talking to yourself in the mirror, jumping up & down, a cold shower and singing a song. Remember, it’s whatever gives you that “I’m ready! Bring it on” feeling. One of the most powerful, Group Shots is the Haka, which, aside from being a powerful 200-year old traditional tribal-war dance, is constantly and flawlessly performed prior to All Blacks (New Zealand) rugby matches. In rugby, the Haka never fails to psych up the whole team, as well as psych out the opposition!

Here’s my Tequila Shot

Power Walking. But not real, 80’s-style leg-warmers almost running Power Walking. My type of power walking translates literally as “walking with power” meaning, I start to walk (often before and after going for a run) and my posture is, well, “powerful”: Shoulders back, head up, proud, and a spring in my step. Usually I do it to music. This way of walking doesn’t have to be fast nor very technical, but in order for it to work, you have to feel the power behind your intent and you don’t have to care about being looked at. The end result has not only propelled you beyond your own expectations, it is likely to also help build your reliance for your future challenges.

What’s your Tequila Shot?

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What happened when we all suddenly moved to Working From Home?

Online meetings to discuss goals now have to be planned in advance, set up in our calendars, potentially moved to a later date due to other higher priorities. The meetings may not even have video visual, but just a phone call. Dr Albert Mehrabian’s 7-38-55 rule of personal communication states that 7% of meaning is communicated through spoken words, 38% through tone of voice, and 55% through body language. It is undoubtedly harder, therefore, for a Manager to observe how an employee reacts to their input, when they are not in the same room together.

Mehrabian’s theory leaves some doubts in our minds as to whether we, as managers, have lost our “sensitivity touch” to how our people are feeling. To top it off, most managers were used to seeing their teams together with them in the office and no matter how well we know them, we are easily tempted to think they are working less, now they are sitting comfortably on their sofas. Since lock-down many of us seem to have lost our Manager Superpowers. 

Let’s kill a myth

“People who work from home work less”. Not entirely true. Actually most tend to work more, because they have cut out their daily travel and face-to-face socializing time with colleagues. In the office, many people have to stop what they are doing at a certain time to catch the bus, train etc. If they work from home, they don’t have that hard stop. The risk of working too much is therefore greater when working from home. And important to note: people work a lot, and effectively based on their level of motivation, which is unlikely to depend on where they are working, but rather what they are working on.

So what are your team members working on? And by when do they aim to complete it? If you do not have precise answers to these two questions, this may be the reason why you, as a Manager are feeling like you don’t have control in the remote-working context. Here’s where the need for SMART Objectives comes in, even more than before! 

SMART Objectives just got Smarter

The answer to the original question, “are SMART objectives still smart, now we are working from home?” is yes. Actually they just got smarter, because we need to be more surgical in our approach to setting them, working on them and tracking them, to ensure the desired outcome is delivered. And the need to have goals in place has become paramount to the success of businesses that have opted to keep their workforce working from home.

Give your team members clear, strategic, measurable goals to work on, in order to keep them engaged and highly motivated. Remember the last time you worked on a project that you enjoyed? Did you struggle to close your laptop? I certainly did. 

How can SMART Objectives play out well in a remote-working environment?

We need to put a good deal of focus and practice, to ensure we manage SMART Objectives correctly. We must also keep momentum high until the goals have been achieved (and even thereafter). Do not fall into the trap of setting your team’s SMART goals and then believing they are set up for success from there onward, especially when communication with your team is purely remote. 

Here is some advice on the “technical management” of SMART Objectives:

1. Identify goals that can be measured with data 
2. Break your goals down into smaller, sizeable milestones
3. Consider what great looks like
4. Schedule a realistic deadline for completion
5. Regularly review and adjust them accordingly
6. Tackle potential roadblocks together
7. Focus on the process needed to get there, not just on the results 

Furthermore, keeping a strong relationship based on transparency and trust is probably the most important aspect a Manager should aim to achieve with each of his/her team members during remote working scenarios:

MANAGER TRUST + SMART Objectives = HIGHLY MOTIVATED REMOTE WORKING INDIVIDUAL

The below advice on the “motivational” side of dealing with SMART Objectives is equally as important as the above technical points:

1. Set the scene by showing the Big Picture: What the Company goals are and where their efforts fit in
2. Align: Ask for input from your team member on their goals: how will you go about this goal?
3. Be a “Manager-on-a-tap”: Make yourself available
4. Listen and be open to criticism
5. Debrief and expose, applaud and celebrate great results
6. Apply any lessons learned for the next time

SMART Objectives during remote working requires more check-in moments and potentially readjusting, so they work best when Managers are as agile and flexible as flexible-working is itself.

The post Are SMART Objectives still SMART now we are WFH? appeared first on The Kando Code.

Let’s start with why we long to become great managers. Apart from that satisfying sense of achievement you get from having developed strong talents over time in your team, you may have also had a great manager yourself. So it’s about giving back. Or, on the contrary, like some parents, you want to give your springs everything you were not given yourself.

Whether you are new to people management or have a good few years experience, if you are reading this you are likely to have the basics; those regular one-on-ones with your team members. But let’s face it: No-one is just a people manager anymore. We all have our roles and responsibilities, where “manage a team” is simply an “on top” part of our job description. And you are a good people manager. But it’s like kryptonite is stopping you in your ways.. 

So what will accelerate your growth as a people manager? What will strengthen your management skills? What’s missing? Use the below 6 tips as a checklist that I hope will inspire you to reveal your hidden “S” and fly above and beyond your city’s limits!

1. Build the relationship. Earn the trust

Make sure you develop a healthy relationship with your team members. This fundamentally includes earning their trust. Reveal the real you and be yourself. Be honest and focus on building a strong, long-term connection. This means having (also) informal conversations,  asking for their opinion, following through with their ideas and supporting them.

2. Listen + coach 

A close cousin of the above, but deserves a point all to itself. Listen and coach, in that order. Listening sounds easy, but as you are more experienced than the person reporting to you, it is very tempting to jump in with your advice as soon as you think you have understood the issue. Often, however, the first thing they say is not their real challenge. Show you care, by diving deeper and deeper into what your report is saying, and make sure they do most of the talking.

Start to coach them on the topic only when you are sure you have the full picture. You may even find that they get there on their own, purely thanks to you asking the right questions. That’s a good coach. One effective way to start a conversation where you are an active listener, is to begin with an observation on how you see them today.

3. Empower + Exploit

Empowerment is about giving your team members the space and the tools to take ownership of a project or a task. Your role here is to set them up for success, give them the advice they need and do not micromanage them. They may need to check in with you along the way (if they ask, you know you’ve got points 1 and 2 right). A very effective way of empowering a talent in your team is to ramp them up through succession planning towards your role. Once your team member has achieved something great, make sure you go public with it! Positively exploit the achievement and celebrate their results; drop an email to top management (or everyone) on what they did and how they did it. 

4. Collect the facts and make a dead-set decision

When it comes to decision making, your team members are often fundamental to helping you reach the right conclusion. This 4th point requires you to have conquered all 3 of the above ones: (1) Your strong relationship will ensure that your team members want to help you; (2) Be at the top of your game with your listening skills, so that you dive as deep as possible into the data and the facts your team will share with you; (3) Once your decision has been made, ensure you recognize your team for their support. Then the most important part, once you have all you need, do not waver on your decision. 

5. Face your demons and elephants

It’s hard being a people manager. Then it gets harder when you realize you need to solve a tricky problem with someone in your team. The issue may be about general low performance or one big mistake some has made, or it may be about a bad attitude. In any case, do not delay these cases for longer than a week. Problems need to be faced together with you, front-on and while they are still fresh. Pluck-up your super-courage and have those difficult conversations.

6. Hope you get a tough cookie 

Last but definitely not least, this one will help you become a super-manager the hardest, but potentially the most effective way. By “tough cookie” I mean someone who, for one reason or another, is particularly difficult to manage. They may not believe you are good enough to be their manager, they may have a conflictual personality or they may just not like you. If you have a tough cookie, you know it They may seem like they want to make your life difficult, you may even see each other as the enemy. This team member is constantly challenging you, making you look bad in front of the others, making you feel you are not doing a good job as their manager, right? Why can’t they just be nice, kind and helpful like the others? 

Do not see them as the enemy, because like it or not, these individuals are your key to developing stronger, more mature management skills. Like in sport, if it’s making you sweat, it’s working. These people will stretch you as a manager, as you stretch them in their developmental path. By constantly challenging you, they will force you to look around corners, obsess about high standards, reason, experiment, search alternative solutions. They will push you to become greater than what you expected. You just have to recognize and embrace the situation. In their defense, they are probably just ambitious and don’t want to be set back.

Don’t fall into the trap of being negatively provoked, but take a moment to assess what is the best way to react, maturely as the super-manager you are.  

Finally Superman-ager, Leadership is about leading, and leading by example. And above all, it’s more about giving than receiving, because if your focus is on giving (listening, building on their growth, developing their skills, caring, etc.) then it is likely you will receive a great deal more, as a consequence.

The post How to become SUPERMAN(ager) appeared first on The Kando Code.

Part of the reason for the arrival of these new roles is due to the rapid evolution of the digital age and the integration of new technologies, but many companies are also becoming more “visionary” with their mission, more ambitious with what they want to achieve and, consequently, more creative with the roles they need in their organization. So these mushrooms are not just job titles.

Evolving companies

Fast-growing companies are necessarily more reckless, fearless and disruptive than ever before. They eat challenging business objectives for breakfast. Companies of this kind need a solid and innovative organizational model with new concepts. They cannot, therefore, replicate what has already been done in the past. Instead, they design new processes and policies tailored to their needs, which are constantly changing as they evolve. And that’s when those mushrooms pop up.

Let’s take a real example: “Chief People Officer (CPO)”. In this case, alongside the role of HR Director, it is likely that the CPO popped up on HR’s org chart because certain companies have realized that their People are fundamental to the success of the company. Hence the need to focus more on their development and retention rather than giving way to a “natural” attrition and then selecting (and training) new people. In this case the mushroom is due to the implementation of a whole new people strategy.

Recruiting the New Mushrooms

@Recruiters: How are you going to find the right candidates for roles that didn’t exist until recently? What will your key search words be? The good news is that the right candidates already exist on the market. They are mushrooms in disguise. Until these new professions become extremely common within organizations, the candidates you are searching for are likely to have more traditional job titles, but you should look for signs of “mushroom potential”. 

Here’s another example: It doesn’t matter what your candidates’ job titles are now for a Chief Internet of Things Officer opportunity. What does matter is that you recognize the signs for your candidates to comfortably become one. The ideal candidate is likely to have led and successfully delivered advanced digital projects, where new technologies and devices play a key role in driving company advancement and sophistication levels.

What an exciting Next Big Challenge (and a great sales pitch recruiters!). If you are having difficulty finding the right candidate, take 3 strategic steps to provide you with some inspiration.

And aside from the recruitability signs, let’s not forget that the most talented candidates are those who (also) have:

• an impressive ability to adapt 
• extraordinary curiosity 
• excellent learning skills

And the wisest companies are hiring more and more based on the above and the candidates’ soft skills, and not purely on the basis of those who tick all the boxes on technical skills.

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Employee growth to its full potential is not going to happen by just doing their day-by-day jobs. It needs to be planned. Objectively. If managers want to be deliberate about developing their resources (which they should), they need to identify the elements that they can use to guide them in the right direction. Here are some ways in which companies can set the stage for a healthy career path:

1. Performance Evaluations
2. Full, documented job definitions and descriptions
3. SMART objectives
4. Internal Moves
5. International assignments
6. Executive MBA
7. Extra projects 
8. Succession planning
9. Going the Extra Mile

While points 1-8 are relatively common among organizations’ talent development and promotion plans, the impact of point 9, Going the Extra Mile is generally underestimated or even unknown. 

What does going the Extra Mile mean? 

It means going above and beyond what is expected of one’s role. Generally speaking, those who go there love the company they work for, aim for continuous improvement, are fully engaged and aligned to the company goals and are a great culture fit. Here are some examples of an employee who has gone that extra mile:

• Has received an award 
• Is an ambassador of some sort for the company
• Has received recognition in a company event 
• Has made successful employee referrals
• Has made efforts within the community representing the company
• Is someone’s mentor or buddy
• Volunteers to present or take training sessions
• Is recognized as an exceptional People Manager (encouraging their top talents to move internally to other teams to enable further growth)
• Has received unsolicited, positive feedback from colleagues and/or customers
• Has been recognized for their frugality
• Is mirroring some of their manager’s job
• Is a solid coach for people outside their team or company

In a nutshell, those who go the Extra Mile are leading by example, and that, in itself is a masterful mechanism to recognize they are growing professionally.

For the many ways in which you can tell if your employees are developing and growing in their roles, it is important that these fit into the company’s culture and belief foundations. In order to recognize the Extra Mile as a threshold for career growth, it needs to be deeply embedded into the “Reasons to Promote” company manuscript. 

5 reasons why companies should build the “Extra Mile” into their Reasons to Promote

1. Employer Brand – It makes for a healthy, modern, state-of-the-art company to work for 
2. Company culture – developing a stronger internal identity
3. It supports company progression
4. It gives a temperature check on Engagement and Retention 
5. It can contribute to Recruitment efforts (Employer brand and Employee Referrals)

Fundamentally, if employees are not being recognized for going the extra mile, why should they do it?  It’s a win-win, where the employee benefits as (s)he is recognized as part of their growth plan and the company benefits from the employee delivering beyond expectations.

The post Building an Extra Mile culture appeared first on The Kando Code.

What is it?

Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing new leaders who can replace the original leaders when they leave, get promoted or move to a new role within the same company. 

As a concept, succession planning is a solid way to build a career path for talented employees, as it ultimately aims to have your, the Managers build their teams’ competences, to the point where it is no longer necessary to hire senior external talent, as their Organic Growth is strong enough to cater for those needs. 

To carry out the plan effectively, companies must have clarity on their long-term goals and the developmental needs of their employees. Ensuring that employees understand their career paths and the roles they are being developed to fill, is paramount to the plan’s success. I would also advise companies to be aware of potential competitors’ attractiveness and the roles they will have a difficult time filling externally.

Why?

Apart from the obvious, which is to guarantee long-term continuity in key company roles, there are several more advantages for both employers and employees to having a formalized succession plan in place:

• Employees know that there is a chance for advancement and ownership, which can lead to higher satisfaction. 
• It reduces attrition and increases engagement (some of the most regretted leavers potentially could have been “saved” had there been a succession plan for them in place).
• Management’s commitment to succession planning means that they will transfer knowledge and expertise to the successor.
• Management keeps a better track of the value of employees so that positions can be filled internally when opportunities arise.
• Leadership and employees are better able to share company values and vision.
• Founders and leadership may retire or choose to leave their operational seat, in which case a new generation of leaders can be developed strategically over time, without additional external hiring and related extra costs.
• It improves the employer brand identity both internally and externally.
• It increases overall employee seniority, ensuring the company runs smoothly, even if key figures leave (or are absent)

Who?

Succession Planning is complex and usually cannot be applied to the whole organization at once. Companies can begin by assessing the Leadership Team’s roles first, or they might want to prioritize middle-management. Alternatively, their primary focus might be based on the most “vulnerable roles”; those at high risk of being vacant in the short-to-mid term, are key roles within the company and are without a ready internal solution. To help the company and yourself clarify your current situation as a manager, you can place yourself into one of the following categories:

1. I have no Internal Successor 
2. I can have a Successor ready in 12-36 months 
3. I have a Successor ready now 
4. I don’t need a Successor

Cases 1 and 2 of the above are the ones that are standing in the priority lane for a succession plan. Here are the key considerations for you if you need to build your plan:

• What are the key competences needed to be successful in my role?
• Do I have someone in mind who could replace me? 
• If yes, how long would it take for them to be ready? 
• Could I consider splitting my role in 2-3 pieces for multiple managers to adopt parts of my job?
• What are the actions I need to take to develop my successor? 
• What would happen if I freed my role tomorrow? 

The last question is just to make it feel a bit more real

How?

In order for a succession plan to work, carry out a self-evaluation and understand why you have been successful in your role. Self-awareness as a manager is key; list the relevant knowledge and skills you’ve needed to achieve your goals. The plan should ensure that it stretches its successor, adding on responsibilities and SMART objectives. You must also make sure that your successor is aware of the intent, set expectations and check if this is what (s)he wants.

Once you are underway with the plan, make sure you incorporate strategies for learning, training, development, and the transfer of corporate knowledge, as well as following through with This Process:

1. Nominate your successor + give an estimate on their 0-3 year readiness
2. Send your nomination to Leadership and CHRO for their input on eligibility
3. Related to point 2, an external assessment of the candidate(s) can be very effective as the next step
4. Implement your Succession Plan
5. Make a bi-annual review on progress vs plan: has readiness decreased or accelerated? What are the gaps? What is required to fill the gap? (if necessary, warn your successor they can be removed from the plan if performance expectations are not met)
6. Assess and communicate timing for the move to the new role based on the review on progress vs plan. 
7. Move your successor to “The Ready Pool”

When?

Here’s the most tricky part of the plan: often it is unclear when your successor will effectively take on your role, so if timing is lengthy, it is important to keep them engaged and motivated. Solid tactics to retain their engagement are through effective one-on-ones, monetary incentives, a job title change and passing over a part of your role as soon as they are ready to take it on..

Rolling out a succession plan may take months or years to complete, based on the readiness of the candidate. In any case, be sure to invest your time in their growth, with the intent to flawlessly pass over your role, by the end of the journey.

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1. Coaching

Coaching generally occurs during your 1:1s. It is a regular exercise where you as the manager teach your successor the key items of your role, the challenges you face and challenge them on what they would do. Walk them through the typical, most challenging scenarios you face in your role and test their knowledge as a result. Coaching your successor must be practical and on-the-job.

2. Training

These can be internal or external based on internal existing competences, but are always related to specific topics that add to the successor’s knowledge / skill set. Personally I find the best training sessions are a mix of theory and practice, such as role-playing. 

3. Shadowing

Take your Successor with you to all critical internal and external meetings. Brief your talent before the meetings and debrief the meeting together, afterwards. Shadowing can be split into 3 phases, whereby initially the successor is a silent observer, then they actively participate in the meetings, then they own them.

4. Acting

This is where your successor really starts to get a taste of what it takes to do your job, as you are putting them actively in the hot seat: The best occasion to have your successor “enact” your role is when you take annual leave. “Test” your successor by having them take on some, or every aspect of your role (based on how ready they are).

5. Mentoring

Identify your Successor’s mentor (which could be you or another senior leader). The mentor has regular 1:1’s with the Successor to support them with their challenges. Mentoring should not be confused with coaching. The mentor discussions are not necessarily related to performance in their roles but more long-term related and based on personal development. My Manager found me a great mentor about 5 years ago and we talked mostly about behaviours concerning my growth and how to improve my internal networking skills.

6. Lateral Moves

Especially if there are noticeable gaps in their experience before becoming you, move your successor to a new role to fill those gaps and have greater visibility of your team’s full set of responsibilities + operational know-how.

7. Assignments

Give your successor a challenging stretch-project in a diverse environment, perhaps in a different country, to enhance and build their competences. Lateral moves and assignments may go hand-in-hand.

8. Leadership Roles

Adding extra people and/or project management responsibilities to your successor’s role may be an essential part of building their leadership strength to the point where you feel confident they are ready and will succeed in your role. 

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One-on-one’s are a formal and regular opportunity in which a Manager and their team member can invest their time to communicate in a structured manner. 

They:

• create context for managers and their team members to perform better
• set expectations
• provide guidance to employees in their roles 
• help both employee and manager solve tough challenges
• are the optimal setting for two-way communication streams
• are an excellent relationship builder 
• may catch problems early
• give managers the opportunity to recognize their talents and develop their skills, knowledge and ultimately their careers

Content

When I’ve asked employees or managers in the past what they cover during their 1:1’s, I’ve been surprised and disappointed to hear them say “we have a general chat about how things are going” or “mainly just updates” or “we don’t need an agenda, we know each other very well and we talk all the time” hence “we don’t need 1:1’s”. Unfortunately, if managers and employees are to progress, develop and grow as professionals, they need to take a planned, structured and objective approach to these meetings. Otherwise they are wasting each other’s time. 

First, before the meeting goes ahead, make sure both manager and employee share their  input on the agenda items (what to cover). The input should be balanced and both parties ought to feel responsible for owning a part of the meeting’s content.

Here below a high-level overview of what one-on-ones should cover and how often:

• Employee’s current challenges (weekly)
• Manager’s specific updates (weekly)
• Tracking + measuring progress on goals (weekly)
• 2-way performance feedback (monthly)
• Coaching (monthly)
• Growth within current role (every 1-2 months)
• Career development / future role (every 2-3 months) 
• Extra projects and opportunities (regularity subject to context)
• Employee motivation and happiness (regularity subject to need)

Based on the identified agenda items, you are likely to find that your 1:1 sessions will not cover all of the above areas, every time. So you may want to dedicate a whole, separate session to some of the more long-term items (those that, if you are running out of time “can wait”, but shouldn’t). 

5 basic but essential rules around 1:1’s

1. Avoid talking about your “day-by-day” or giving a “status update”, but if you have to cover it, don’t stay on the topic for very long, as updates can be given via email or other means. Status updates should be discussed however, if some form of Manager/Employee alignment needs to come from it. 
2. Make sure you have identified an actionable follow-up with time-lines for each item you discuss, otherwise they were not worth discussing (@Manager, you may want to take some of those actions for yourself, too )
3. Ensure you set up regular 1:1 sessions in your calendars that are 100% respected by both manager and team member. Do not cancel your session: if you cannot make the time or day postpone the meeting and try to keep it within a week.
4. It may seem obvious but ensure you have a closed, pre-booked meeting room as this sets you up for a potentially difficult conversation you may find yourself having. 
5. Apply a no-interruptions rule as this will demonstrate mutual respect.

A message to the Employee

It is quite typical (and very tempting) for managers to drive your 1:1 meetings, but it is better for both if you proactively own a part of it too. The more constructive you are during these meetings the more your manager will value you as a team member. 

Consider bringing to the table:

• your own ideas on how to solve or improve something, a way of working or a process
• your own objectives that make sense within the context of your role (especially in environments where objectives setting are sluggish)
• a forward-thinking approach – show that you are looking around corners
• facing your demons: talk openly if you are worried about something
• energy and desire to learn (ask a lot of questions)
• clarity on your commitments

A message to the Manager

Think about your high-level approach to your 1:1’s with your team member. (S)he is likely to rely on your verbal and non-verbal input, be influenced by your behavior and react according to the results of the conversation (both its content and general “mood”). Give yourself clarity on the below points:

• What is the likely overall tone of the conversation?
• How is the employee performing against their goals?
• What can you do to improve their performance?
• What is your vision?
• What is the main message you want to convey?

Lastly but perhaps most essentially; whether you are the manager or their direct report, make sure you use your Active Listening skills as much as possible to make the most out of your 1:1 meetings.

To gain a deeper insight into some interesting data around how managers approach 1:1 meetings see Soapbox’s results on their 2019 survey.

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