At GLISI's quarterly Coordinating Board meeting on August 7th, we had a interesting "a ha" discussion about the term succession planning. Ed Bankston, one of the GLISI Scholars at UGA, noted in his report to the Board that a more appropriate and politically palatable term might be progression management.
This new term better reflects the fact that good succession planning doesn't just fill vacancies. Rather, it is a more systemic strategy that identifies competencies and performance criteria for current and future positions and current and future personnel.
"Progression management" has currency as a term in the UK (see here and here), but does not come up in recent management texts or in a Google search. That's good news if we need a new term to help with local adoption. However, I'm inclined to make the term succession work for everyone because it has resonance with both education and business leaders and has long legs in the business literature.
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Ann, I love the Falcons opener. It allows us to relate to something we all love - football - yet is a perfect example of a performance culture. Brilliant!
I, too, was struck by the clear definition Ed B shared at Coordinating Board. I also noted Sally Z's comments about not embracing the idea of succession initially. This is the reaction we often get from educators, so, like Ed, I'm thinking we need to "re-brand" people's perceptions or conception of succession. Re-naming it is one way to start, though I can certainly be convinced otherwise.
I also got some "pushback" from our dear colleague Beth R on succession planning versus succession management. Andy Hargreaves evidently comes down on the side of "succession management" believing that succession planning focuses on the separate aspects we list in our continuum (selection, hiring, etc.), while "succession management" refers to "creating a widespread culture of forward-looking talent and expertise from which successors can more easily be drawn." Seems there are polarized "camps" out there, so your suggestion does take us out of that semantic tug of war between succession planning and succession management.
Hmmmm....let's keep noodling on this one! Thanks for stimulating our thinking!
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