Humans are Perishable Commodity !

I believe humans are a perishable commodity – it may sound crazy or scary; but the reality is that all of us humans have a clearly defined expiry date.

Many people would continue to live in the myth that they are going to live and be there forever and keep many things and knowledge to themselves.

Hardly we plan for who will replace us – most of the times the planning is financial planning in terms of insurance and management of money.

In organizations – this is called as Succession Planning (which is hardly done in a systematic way in most organizations). Be it business organizations, political or educational or not-for-profit. It is needed for every one. It is needed at national level, regional, city/town, smaller organizations, families etc.

There are umpteen examples in recent times which has shown how nations, organizations and people have suffered because of lack of a long term view or a systematic succession planning. The situation in congress party in India is a good example; so is the political situation in so many countries like US. This has lead to large scale impact – not only on those organizations but also on nations and large number of citizens. There are many good educational institutions which has gone down the memory lanes as critical people are not there now.

There are many organizations, whose business suffers badly when key people leave them (because of any reason) – they never imagined that our loyal (critical) employees may leave or fall sick or even die. They lived in a myth that people are forever. Few companies like GE and Google have been able to manage this process of succession planning well and are still surviving decently and doing well.

The process is simple – 

• Identify Critical Positions in any organization through Critical Position Audit – 
• Define the competencies needed for these critical positions – 
• identify who could replace the current role holders – 
• conduct assessment of these people on defined competencies and 
• then groom the short-listed ones for the critical roles.

This process can be applied to any unit – companies, political parties, not-for-profit, educational institutes and even smaller local organizations. Its not a one-off activity – it has to be part of a culture and must be driven from the top (either by the Board or by the CEO). It has to be impartial and must be conducted in fair manner.

The large sudden changes happening across the world including India and creating surprises among all can be attributed to no long term planning in terms of Succession Plan. This will have quite a negative impact on people across globe.

Its better to start as early possible ; than thinking we wish, we could have !!

PS: Don’t try at home as Some relationships can’t be replaced through succession planning – like your parents J