The Number 1 Reason #succession plans fail: LACK OF OPPORTUNITY Love this framework from Jon Cox NFI to make sure we time our succession development efforts well. During his live session Gartner Evanta, a Gartner Company #chro summit, it was a great aha moment that makes us pause and avoid the biggest pitfall that unintentionally drives our best people out of our companies. #leadership #culture #career #trucking #logistics

Last week, I had the chance to speak at Avanza, the CHRO summit, it's a Gartner event, really great stuff. I'll share more about that in another video, but the thing I wanted to talk about was this model that was presented by the VP of Talent at NFI, a transportation, trucking, logistics organization by the VP, John Cox, and it's a model he's put together. I think it's really, really compelling when talking about succession planning, where we're in a room, there's about almost 75 other CHROs and HR leaders, and talking about like, what are the biggest challenges facing really meaningful succession planning programs, right? Where we can connect and be clear, like, do we have, are we understanding the career aspiration both for the organization and for the leader? Are we aligned between that and have a shared responsibility about what skills or experiences that we need to put in? Almost everybody in the room agreed, fundamentally, that was great. The biggest gap though, which makes true development plan successful, is opportunity, right? Like you could have the right understanding about where we want to go, what type of people we want and key about who we are and what I need for myself as the employee. We know what skills I need to develop and what stretch assignments, et cetera. But if there isn't the right opportunity, the timing of it, right, especially for more senior roles where they're limited in type, you know, you end up actually creating a really uncomfortable position or potentially counter productive situation where, you know, as the employee, I'm like, all right, you've tapped me. I've seen this happen. I'm sure you have too, where a high potential, I've been tapped. I know I'm somebody who is valuable, but when am I moving? How am I getting into it? Is there really an opportunity there? And that opportunity is always part of this triangle, which I really appreciated it. But the risk is it might be outside. How many times do we invest in people and make sure we're all clear on the potential, but the opportunity really isn't available inside in the right time, but outside there is. So there's lots of risk involved. So the secret sauce is if you're really going to invest in folks, you have to align this with the right timing of it. Not just when our hypo program is ready to start launching this spring, right? But like, are we clear that we can match the opportunity to it? Otherwise we run the risk of setting the wrong expectations, setting ourselves up for failure. So I really appreciate John Cox for sharing this great idea and concept to help us plan better succession programs.