Polish Up Your Crystal Ball

Training & Development, Nov 2007 by Salopek, Jennifer J

Forecasting competencies for crucial positions in the organization will make succession planning easier.

The nuclear energy industry was in its heyday in the late 1970s until the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster occurred in Middletown, Pennsylvania.

The partial meltdown of the nuclear power plant damaged the industry's image and caused public trust to plummet. For the next three decades, the industry was virtually frozen in time.

That accident has scared away college graduates and entry-level employees and has created some human resources shortages for the Washington D.C.-based Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), which is facing the potential retirement of up to 60 percent of its 138-member staff within the next five years. An improved public relations image has made recruitment and retention of staff critical to the future success of the organization.

The relative dormancy of the industry generated very little enthusiasm among college graduates and entrylevel employees until very recently. Phyllis Rich, vice president and treasurer of NEI, says the organization is facing serious challenges in succession planning and knowledge retention, and both issues must be addressed to keep the organization effective and relevant. An important first step is defining competencies and improving NEI's forecasting ability to pave the way for more informed succession planning.

The Core Competency Project "Competencies help organizations identify what they are looking for in future leaders, and help target selection, development, and retention strategies," says David Berke, senior program associate at the Center for Creative Leadership in San Diego. "However, too many organizations make wish lists, rather than sitting down to figure out what competencies distinguish them from their competitors and make the organization successful."

Rich and her colleagues at NEI are doing just that. Four years ago, the institute launched its Core Competency Project, a formal procedure to identify the competencies necessary for success in positions at three critical levels of the organization: administrative staff, mid-level managers, and directors. Focus groups are the crucial tool.

For each selected role, a group of six people come together to work their way through a series of predetermined questions that are designed to uncover what competencies are necessary for the successful performance ofthat role. The six people are carefully selected to provide a 360-degree view of the role: two hold the position themselves, two are their direct reports, and two are their supervisors.

"Incumbents in each position contain and maintain a lot of specialized knowledge," says Rich. "We must prepare for continuity. From a forecasting standpoint, the best thing our organization can do is talk about this issue at the management level. I try to keep our executives very engaged and continually bring the subject up."

Advice from the experts Keeping executives' attention on competency forecasting and succession planning is one of many best practices suggested by the experts. Here are more tips designed to help you polish up your forecasting skills:

Decide on your competency philosophy. According to Bill Rothwell, professor of workforce education and development at Penn State University and author of several books on succession planning, you first must decide on your approach: Will you identify the key competitive differences of your business and drive them down, or will you look at each individual's talents and roll them up? Either way, Rothwell advises that you must take a qualitative approach and review talent on an annual basis.

"Too many companies rely on the legacy approach to hiring, a paternalistic view of keeping employees without the necessary skill sets," he says. "In such organizations, new managers often inherit employees that show no match between competencies and the goals of the business."

Acquire a global perspective. Educate yourself about future competency needs for the workforce as a whole, not just your business or industry, advises Kevin Oakes, CEO of the Institute for Corporate Productivity in Seattle. One resource Oakes recommends is O*Net Online, the website of the Occupational Information Network. The site includes a database containing information on hundreds of standardized and occupation-specific descriptors.

Ask the people who know. Just as Rich is doing at the Nuclear Energy Institute, you must recognize that the employees who are currently doing the job are best prepared to tell you what it requires. Although they may not be able to create a list of competencies, they can provide descriptions that you can interpret.

When working with clients on competency forecasting and succession planning projects, Jeff Lesher, chief operating officer of Applied Knowledge Sciences in Boyce, Virginia, a small group asks to describe a successful client engagement.

"You can make forecasting as complicated as you want and can study it until the end of time," Lesher says. "But if you make it too hard, people will lose concentration and interest. The approach I typically take is to talk to the executive team or a small group that's been selected as company arbiters. We engage people in talking about what works and how they want to move the organization forward."