During a recent roundtable with CEOs from eleven local firms, one of the leaders proposed this evolution, or career phases – “Learn, Earn and Return.”
David Dietrich offers these ideas, explanations. “Learning is where it all begins. In order to begin building a successful life, you must have the prerequisite knowledge to start earning, then returning.
Every day, set out to learn something new. Not just one thing, but with everything you touch. If you are faced with a new life experience, learn about it. It is only going to make you stronger while providing the wisdom necessary to reap huge rewards in your personal and professional life. Often, you need to learn the business before you can reap its rewards.
Earn has many meanings – take home, what you deserve, win or maybe what you are worthy of from others.
You earn pay, earn respect, earn admiration. These are just some of the things we earn in life. By working hard to earn the things that mean most to you, you will gain an amazing amount of wisdom that you can now return to the rest of the world surrounding and influencing you.
Returning is the ultimate validation to what you’ve learned and earned in life. When you finally able to give back to your family, your community, and those beyond you, you’ve have reached the highest level of achievement.
Think about it. When you are able to help others around you, you are leading. You are leveraging your experience and you talent to help bring other up around you.”
Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing internal people with the potential to fill key business leadership positions in the company. Succession planning increases the availability of experienced and capable employees that are prepared to assume these roles as they become available. Taken narrowly, “replacement planning” for key roles is the heart of succession planning. Effective succession or talent-pool management concerns itself with building a series of feeder groups up and down the entire leadership pipeline.
Keeping the pipeline full is a major leadership responsibility.
Succession Planning (click for video) involves many pieces and parts. It involves strategy.
Training needs analysis, coaching and trust. It may require operational analysis, an improvement plan. A different level of financial planning, make vs. buy decisions, “key man” insurance and organizational development.
Succession planning is not an exit strategy. Succession planning needs to be part of the culture of learn, earn and return. Keeping the pipeline full is what good teams do. Planning on helping employees become leaders is part of the culture of success.
Developing and matching leaders to the companies needs, looking around the corner is a key to succession planning.
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