One of the questions many employees generally ask is to understand the difference between career and succession planning in organisations. Career planning is for individuals whereas succession planning is for key positions in the organisation.

Let us look at career planning first. Every individual, who joins an organisation wants to climb the corporate ladder. Everyone aspires to reach the highest level possible in the organisation in the shortest possible time.

How do we do career planning ? Career planning is to be done by individuals, managers for their team members and HR for key people in the organisation. Who is ultimately responsible for career planning ? In my view, the individual employee has to take the ultimate responsibility of planning their own careers.

It is like an aspiring sportsperson. We recently saw the world chess champion emerge from India. This young boy at the age of 7 dreamt of becoming the world champion and worked towards it by dedication, commitment and a lot of hard work. He was ably supported by mentors and coaches to realise his dream goal.

Similarly, in the organisational context, every individual needs to have a dream. An aspirational goal to achieve in their own careers. This could be long term, medium term and short term. Once the goal emerges, the individual needs to plan their steps to achieve that goal. The individual’s manager and HR partner could support them in identifying the steps and developing the capabilities to achieve that goal.

The manager has the responsibility to enable career planning of her team members. While the individual should be made ultimately responsible to steer their careers, the manager can be an invaluable mentor or guide in this process.

Human Resources partner can be the facilitator of the process. HR can help the individual and the manager to identify the steps to the goal and also the capabilities required at different stages of the individual’s career.

On the other hand, Succession planning is for key positions in the organisation. This is primarily the role of HR and senior leadership in the organisation. HR needs to identify what could be the key positions in the organisation which are critical. A simple method is to start with the top two levels in the organisational hierarchy and then look at other key positions.

Once positions are identified, HR along with leadership needs to define what are the key capabilities to effectively play those roles. Then identify whether we have suitable people within the organisation, who can be groomed to play those roles. If not, identify people outside the organisation, who could be inducted so that they can be developed as successors for key positions.

To summarise, career planning is for individuals and every employee has to take responsibility for their own careers. They need to be supported by their managers and HR to evolve the steps, develop the capabilities and move towards their career goals.

On the other hand, succession planning is for key positions. HR & leadership have to identify the key positions, the capabilities required for those positions and also the people who can be groomed to take over those positions in the future. This could be from within or outside the organisation. Further their development to make them ready to take over these roles in the future needs to be planned and executed.

Career planning is for individuals and succession planning is for key positions.

S Ramesh Shankar

23rd Dec 2024

One of the vital questions I have been asked multiple times in my career as a HR professional by employees at all levels is -“Who will plan my career ? As we get into life, we tend to believe that our parents determine what we want to do in life. They we depend on teachers to guide us through what we want to do in life.

As we get into the professional world, we again imagine that our managers or leaders ,are responsible for evolving our career. In the beginning of our career, we depend on our seniors and our manager to tell us what is best for us.

Even when I visited a campus, I used to be asked by freshers, as to what their career will look like, in the organisation they were joining. I would ask them in return, if they could tell me as to how long they would stay in the organisation, ..they would respond saying they were not sure. I would then state ,that the day they were sure of their longevity in the organisation they are going to work for, we could discuss about their career.

Life and career are no different. We can always imagine ,that there is someone else in our lives and organisations, who will enable us shape our careers. Imagine an entrepreneur thinking ,that someone else is going to build and grow their company. It is neither the financier nor other investors, who are responsible for the growth and sustainability of their enterprise.

Similarly, an individual’s career is the prime and sole responsibility of the individual employee and nobody else. While everyone else can help us clarify what could be best for us, it is for us to determine ,what we want to do in life and how we do it.

A sportsperson cannot depend on the coach ,to determine how they want to excel in their sports. If they want to be the best in the world, they have to set their own goals and evolve the path to achieve it ,with the help and support of parents, teachers, coaches and friends and not the other way around.

Similarly, in any organisation, if an employee aspires to become the CEO of the organisation, where she is working, she has to set that goal and work on the knowledge, skills and road map ,to realise that goal, in a defined time frame.

I have seen children ,defining their goals in life and achieving them through hard work, determination and purposeful actions. The same is true for employees. I remember ,once an interviewee ,when asked where he would see himself in his career in 5 years ,replied that I would like to replace you as the head of the function.

The day we understand ,that I determine my destiny ,by my own actions, we will achieve whatever we dream in life. We need to steer our own life and career, thinking we are the CEO of our life and everything ,is in our own hands.

It is time to realise that ,only we ,can build our career and life ,the way we want it.

S Ramesh Shankar

30th Sep 2024

 

We are all born with natural intelligence. We develop this in our childhood. I am told that the human brain grows only up to a certain age in childhood and then possibly ,we need to exercise our brain to sharpen our intelligence.

In our early childhood, we are asked to memorise poems and debates at school and also some religious texts at home. This way our brain gets to exercise and perhaps helps us to keep ourselves alert.

As we move to college, we still get opportunities to test our brain and intelligence ,through projects and assignments. This continues at our workplace in corporates and in our own businesses.

However, as technology has developed ,we have started depending more on it, than on human brain. In the past, we remembered the phone numbers of all our friends and relatives ,since the landline we had ,did not have memory and it possibly compelled us to do so. Today we may not even remember our own numbers ,since the mobile stores everything for us and retrieves in a jiffy.

Human intelligence is natural and is possibly given in equal measure ,to all of us ,by the Almighty. Some of us exercise our brain enough and hence become more intelligent than others. Some may let laziness overcome them and hence their brains possibly degenerates faster.

Today we hear and talk of Artificial intelligence . As the name suggests, artificial intelligence is developed by mankind. It is artificial by nature and responds the same way. It is like a database ,developed over a period of time and can at best do repetitive tasks better than human beings.

Let us take an example. We all are aware of self driving cars. I understand that the artificial intelligence for these cars are developed by human beings ,by studying and feeding data over a period of time in all possible situations, in which a human being drives a car. So ,this AI enabled self driving car ,is able to reach its destination through the route fed into it and responds as is needed ,in all possible situations ,it can encounter on the way.

However, imagine a child tries to play prank on the road or the power fails due to a major grid failure and the traffic signals do not operate the way it should. A human being driving a car ,may be in a better position to respond in such a situation and drive to her destination safely. A self driving car may struggle to do the same.

In my view, artificial intelligence can do repetitive tasks possibly better than human beings can. However when complex human emotions come into play, artificial intelligence may not be able to adapt to the same and respond.

Another example could be that an AI enabled bot could possibly diagnose a cancer patient based on all possible cancer cases recorded all around the world. However, if a new variant of cancer comes in, like the Covid pandemic hit us, only Human intelligence will be able to respond and manage it.

We need to strike the right balance between ,natural or human intelligence and artificial intelligence ,to be happier in life.

Lets start today.

S Ramesh Shankar

13th Sep 2023