Aggressive Talent Management
Kellye Whitney


Sports metaphors often are used as a common language to explain the cut and thrust of business. It makes sense — there’s the team-work element, the air of competition and (with any luck) a sense of fair play. But unnecessary roughness on the field not withstanding, how aggressive should succession planning be?

“We’ve had a very institutionalized succession planning process for about 20 years, and I know in talking with other organizations that they may define what we do as very aggressive because we spend a lot of time on it,” said Holly Kurtz, Wells Fargo senior vice president and director talent management and learning. “We use it all year long, we take talent actions from it, our CEO is personally involved, but that’s just how we do it. It’s a process that we pay a lot of attention to.”

There are a few different components involved in creating an aggressive succession planning strategy, or what Wells Fargo calls “talent review.” First, Kurtz said it’s critical to have CEO and senior leadership involvement and sponsorship.

“They hold people accountable for it,” she said. “We have a talent-review period that culminates in a series of meetings with our CEO, our chief human resources officer, myself and each of the heads of our business. We spend several hours with each of our 24 businesses, doing a very in-depth review of talent in the organization both from a succession planning perspective, but also, ‘Who’s ready for a move, where are their blockers, who are the stars, how are we doing around developing our diverse leadership pipeline?’”

Aggressive succession planning can mean evaluating multiple factors affecting the talent pool, not just ensuring there’s someone waiting on the bench in the event of an emergency.

At Wells Fargo, the talent review conversation will out-line business objectives for the year and the talent implications around them. Out of that talent review process, some kind of action will result.

For instance, Kurtz said, if Joe Smith has been identified as being ready for a move, sometime during the year, his senior leader will help him move into the next role via promotion or a stretch assignment.

“Each of the leaders report in, in terms of readiness for a move, development action, risk around marketability and job satisfaction. There’s a number of factors discussed around each person,” Kurtz said. “If talent has been identified as ready for a move, for the rest of the year, we work to help that talent get into the next role, whether that’s inside or outside their business. We have check-in meetings twice a year with each of the senior leaders, so we build accountability into it, as well. It’s not just, ‘Check it off the list — we did succession planning.’”

Aggressive talent review also will look down the leadership pipeline to identify rising stars and make sure robust and aggressive development plans are in place to help them achieve their potential.

“We’ve been very focused on that around our diverse leader pipeline,” Kurtz said. “We have different tools and criteria to look at high-potential, emerging potential and a group we call ‘high professional,’ meaning they have very valuable resources and skill sets, but they’re not necessarily about upward mobility.

“But we wouldn’t want to lose them, so that’s a talent pool we pay attention to. You live it all year long, what you’ve talked about, and follow up on it. The key opening happens, you look at your backup list and say, ‘Who did we talk about, who did we consider?’ We do the outreach.”

Kellye Whitney is a senior editor for Talent Management magazine.

http://www.talentmgt.com/succession_planning/110/index.php