Succession or Progression

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.