Ways to Develop Your Organization with Succession Planning

Ways to Develop Yur Organization with Succession PlanningWays to Develop Yur Organization with Succession PlanningWays to Develop Your Organization with Succession PlanningMay 12, 2011Your organization must grow and change in bestellung to survive the leadership you have today will notlage be the leadership of the future. What steps have you taken to promote the continued evolution and growth of your organization? How will your organization support the development of organizational succession planning and retention of key employees? Learn ways to design and optimize your leadership kollektivs.This webinar will guide you through the process of how to prepare your organization for succession planning through the following stepsDesigning a base line organizational mission, vision and values statements.Assessing key executive potential, talent gaps and retention strategy.Key strategies to assess future changes in punkt responsibilities, new market expansions and skill sets.would like to thank Todd Hohauser for presenting this webinar.Presented byTodd HohauserPresident of Harvey Hohauser AssociatesTodd Hohauser is the president of Hohauser and Associates an affiliate of the 8th largest retained executive search groups in the world, IIC Partners. He also serves on the Board of Directors for IIC Global Partners and has spent seven years of service in the behavioral sciences field. An acknowledged expert in the assessment, identification and placement of leaders, Todd works fruchtweinly with family geschftliches miteinanderes and is a specialist in the coordination and recruitment of exceptional executive talent in the following areas operations, information technology, engineering, financial management, retail, healthcare and manufacturing. He received a B.S. from Western Michigan University and a M.S.M. from Walsh College where he welches the recipient of the Outstanding Alum of the Decade. He is also the Board Chairman Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan (epilepsymichi gan.org/).Webinar Transcript Ways to Develop Your Organization with Succession PlanningGood afternoon, everyone. Im Randi Alterman. Im Marketing Director here with Monster, and Id like to thank you for joining us today for this exclusive webinar sponsored by Intelligence. Today were going to discuss ways to develop your organization with succession planning. In this Intelligence webinar, were joined by Todd Hohauser, President of Harvey Hohauser Associates. This webinar will guard you through the process of how to prepare your organization for succession planning.Before we get abfluged, I do have just a few housekeeping items. This webinar is being recorded, and a copy of todays recording will be posted on hiring.monster.com within two to three days. Just click on the Resources tab, and go to HR Events. All participants will receive an schmelzglas with the direct link to todays materials.Intelligence provides insight to help HR professionals improve their recruiting success, accele rate worker performance, and retain top talent. We analyze and collect data from over four million unique job searches that are performed each and every day on Monster. We invite you to visit hiring.monster.com, and read some of our other in-depth reports and analysis, all located under the Resources tab.There will be time after the presentation for some questions and our meeting manager will help facilitate the QA. Please feel free, at any time during the webinar to type your question in the available space during the event, and well try to include it in the QA session. Additionally, if youre getting your audio through the phone, you are placed on mute until the QA session begins.Id like to now introduce our speaker. Todd Hohauser is President of Hohauser and Associates, an affiliate of the eighth-largest-retained executive search groups in the world IIC partners. He also serves on the board of directors for IIC global partners and has spent seven years of service in the behavioral sciences field. An acknowledged expert in the assessment, identification, and placement of leaders. Todd runs fruchtwein of his family geschftslebenes, and is a specialist in the coordination and recruitment of exceptional executive talent in the far wing areas operation, information technology, engineering, financial management, retail, health care, and manufacturing. Hes received a BS from National Michigan University, and MSM from Walsh College where he welches the recipient of The outstanding ? of the decade. Hes also the board chairman of Epileptic Foundation of Michigan.Im now going to turn the webinar over to you.Okay, great. Thank you very much Randy and welcome to everyone. Im calling you from beautiful, Troy in Michigan, which is a suburb of Detroit. And we actually got our snow melted here in May, which is nice.Im talking to you today about developing your organization with succession planning, and what happens a lot in organizations. We are a retained executive search f irm that have been around for 25 years. We have a bit of a family geschftlicher umgang ourselves, in that my father started the geschftsleben 25 years ago. I joined 12 years ago. Subsequently, a lot of the search work we do are for medium and large size family businesses that need strategic leaders. This can be CEOs, CFOs, VPs, etc. A lot of unterstellung issues that have to do with family businesses are succession planning issues, there are gap issues, etc. And theres a lot of pieces that fall into this puzzle because behauptung family businesses are getting larger and larger. Were seeing them growing not only here at our local market, but internationally. A lot of times we find family businesses a little different than the publicly traded businesses that may be looking at things quarter-to-quarter. Family businesses tend to look at things more along the lines of generation-to-generation. So, this leads to more longitudinal planning and the thought, If they look at their managemen t teams whats going to come next? And how the organization is going to continue.When you look at the term succession planning, you have to be very careful because you will come across a lot of different facets. If you are somebody who is in the accounting and finance world, youre really going to be worrying about tax issues and the transition of financial matters within the family and ownership, etc. If you tuned in for that, Im sorry. Thats not what we were talking about today. If you come from the legal background, youre going to be very concerned about different state laws that may be attributable to succession planning. And if thats what you tuned in for today, Im afraid thats not it either. What we were going to talk today about is succession planning and planning the organization as you grow and continue to develop in this ever changing world.With that, Im going to dive right in here. Our process is a very holistic process in nature. Whenever we address an organization, were r eally addressing the organization through three leiters. The first phase is understanding the culture. The second phase is understanding the candidates. And the third phase is making the match. The process itself leads to success. You really have to pay attention to the process, and I try to unplug some of those things from our process in bestellung to help you folks that are listening. So here we generally start, if I can move along here in the presentation, is this holistic approach. There are other ways to approach succession planning, as far as people are concerned, and no one way is the right way. Different organizations are driven in different matters. One partie that can be successful in one business, may or may not be successful with another. This is the first bullet point that has to do with holistic, versus bureaucratic, versus egalitarian. Taking the in-depth hard look at the type of organization environment you have, you have to have an understanding of that, before you can even really dive into this topic. Its really hard to figure out your future if you dont understand your current reality. So, sometimes you have to take a very hard look at the pros and cons of your organization in order to figure out who is going to fit in as you continue to grow and change.As I said, every organization is different and unique. And as such, you look at our second bullet point that has to do with mission-vision values. There are lots of mission-vision values I think thats out there. I think the irony is, if you talk to many people who work for different companies and ask them, What are your corporate mission-vision values? you really would be in the minority if you could quote them. So, we always advise our clients that when you are designing these things, they are statements that really do match how the organization feels. And theres a lot of different ways to develop these statements. Theres tons upon tons written about these things. With our own organization, if you visit hohauser.com, youll see our mission-vision and values, which we had an outside facilitator come in because sometimes you just cant see the forest from the trees, and you need somebody else to lead you through the process.One of the searches that we recently completed is for a family-owned business here in Saginaw, Michigan. This is a $200 million third-generation business that makes roofing materials that are distributed throughout the United States. We were helping them to find a CEO, and theyve never really had an external CEO before. So, the previous CEO was the founder of the business, and as you can imagine theres a lot of feelings and emotions tied up with the departure of that individual. Unfortunately, he passed on in the late 90s. So, we really looked at what they wanted to find in a CEO, and had an alignment with values. Im just going to read off some things to you that this company put together. These are eight different areas that were important for them for their incoming CEO. In their successful candidates, they were looking for number one, unquestioned integrity. Number two, driving results. Number three, communication. And number four, judgement. Number five, business acumen. Number six, industry knowledge. Number seven, developing and leveraging relationships. Number eight, thrive on challenge.Of course, these points are specifically applicable to this organization, and every organization will have a very different viewpoint on this. One of the things I found very interesting was throughout the search, they were very interested in finding somebody with a Midwestern work ethic. What does that mean? We actually spent a great deal of time trying to figure out what that meant. Whether there are positive or negative things attributed to that particular statement, the fact of the matter is, its what they used to define their culture, and it was very important to them. In order for them to find the right candidate, they needed to make su re that any folks that were going to help them continue to grow the business had those particular items in their personality traits.There are a lot of different components also when you look into your mission-vision values here on this slide that have to do with the differences in generations. Weve all gotten to the point where were almost sick of the ad nauseam that we hear about Gen X, and the great generation, the boomers, and the Ys. But this is obviously paramount to understand as you move forward in the organization as far as developing a succession plan and were going to get further into that in just a minute with a little poll. But I think that you have to understand what the make up of the organization is. Is it predominately folks from one particular generation or age? Is it necessary for the organization to add folks of a certain generation in order to help the organization continue in its success and development?So we created a poll which is here on the next slide and if you would take a moment to think about your organization and answer this question, What does your workforce look like?I know these are very rough numbers but if you think about the boom, the great, and the X, and the Y generation, some of us may have varying view points on what particular this means. Im going to answer this for my organization as well, because I have the little poll up here. But any who, I think most of us understand these differences in ages. So I think we just have a few moments on this until the results come in.Ive just started accessing some information here while we are waiting. Most people define the baby boom generation as folks who were born from 46 to 64. Generation X is folks born in 65 to 76. Gen Y is 77 and 97 and some people are using this new term Gen I which is 98 to present.Hi, this is Randy.Hi Randy.I was just going to say that the poll has closed and we did get a lot of respondents. Most people are so the 50 percent boomers and 50 percent Xs and Y s and two or three responses came from our top the 80 percent boomers, 10 percent great generation and 10 percent Xs.Okay. Great. So everybody has perfectly balanced organizations. Congratulations. Thats fantastic. This obviously is something that you want to look at in organizational planning, because when youre talking about succession planning, you do want to be concerned about retirement issues and, etc. So, if most of the people are responding D, 50/50 then it looks like people are planning well and that is a good thing, because otherwise, they would have to caution people about that. All right.As far as assessing leaders, you want to do this with your internal management team, the folks that are in place now. Were trying to uncover gaps. For instance, we had a client here that probably had 60 to 70 percent of the owners manuals business in the United States. They print and deliver owners manuals. This particular organization does quite fantastically with delivering, but as th e owner, who was the third-generation leader and CEO of the business, began to meet with some of his direct reports and the sales function quickly realized that there was a gap.If you look at this bullet point, How often do your managers meet with a direct report and the frequency? Because this frequency was occurring, he was able to uncover this gap and fulfill this need. Sometimes, succession planning is a retirement age issue. Sometimes succession planning is a skill gap issue, and with this point, it was a skill gap issue. If nothing else, have monthly check-ins with the direct reports, to make sure that managers are staying on top of whats going on in their lives. These sort of meetings help to determine where different gaps are. You have to do this in order to determine knowledge skills and abilities, development plans, and educational development plans.Many people are very interested in going back to school and adding skills and I say, Thats a fantastic idea.One of my favorit e management tools is this book that most of you might have read, called Now Discover Your Strengths. This book, by Marcus Buckingham, really talks about looking at peoples strengths as opposed to their weaknesses for development. If you look at someones weakness, its usually something they dont want to do. If you look at somebodys strength, its usually something that somebody enjoys doing, and so they want to do it more. This is just one of the many assessment tools that you can use. Thats one in particular that I find is very helpful. Other organizations use, as this slide mentions, the Myers Briggs Wonderlic PI and menschenfreundlich Synergistics. Myers-Briggs, of course, is one that has been used for years and years and is probably the most popular, the most well known, more of a personality assessment. The Wonderlic Assessment, that is a company out of Chicago. They actually have an IQ assessment, but in addition, they have a number of other tools, a CPP or Comprehensive Person ality Profile, which is helpful. Another tool that a lot of our clients have used is a Predictive Index, or PI, which was created by, I believe, the Air Force after World War II. Another one that we use a lot is Human Syngergistics, which is more of a behavioral assessment as opposed to a personality assessment. That Human Synergistics measures candidates on 12 different factors. Their ability to mentor and their ability to work in teams and the like. These tools can help you to uncover what sort of development areas or strengths your management team and their subsequent direct reports will have. I always caution organizations because these tools are fantastic tools as a management tool. I always caution people to put a little asterisk here. Be careful how you use them in hiring, because there are some legal battles that have occurred because people said they used these tools as a selection tool, and thats a whole other webinar in itself that Im not even going to get in to. Theyre r eally helpful as a management tool, once again, to uncover what exactly your managers and their direct reports skills are.I thought it just might be interesting to see, on this next poll, if any of you are using different assessment tools within your organization. I picked the three biggies as far as we see them, but Ive also got a selection here of others. If you can take a moment to punch in if your organization uses these, and well see what everybody does.silenceOkay. All right, our poll just ended and we should show the results soon.Okay great. Thank you, Brittany.Okay, I see the results on my screen. I dont know if everyone else does, so I can give you the results here. Myers Briggs was only 7 percent. TI was 6 percent. Do you see the results now?Yes. I see them. 69 percent from none. Wow. Interesting. I have mixed feelings about that Randi because as I said, I always caution people using these tools or relying too much on the tools. Weve got to remember that its just another p otential data point, so in a way this is good, and in a way this is schwimmbad. But, you may want to look into these tools in order to help you understand who your team is and what strengths they have.Okay, as far as talent gaps. This is something that I was alluding too with my client in the owners manual business. As they continue to grow, they really spent a tremendous amount of time in the back end of fulfillment of the business to ensure that they had the right people as Vice President of Quality, and Vice President of Manufacturing and Operations. They really wanted to make sure that the delivery system was intact and they spent a lot of time focusing on that, which is very important because the document which is in everybodys glove box, which nobody reads, is legally required by the automotive company. So, they need to have this document there and it has to be picture perfect, so that is very important. However, as the company looks at strategic areas to grow, because they fo cused so much on the back end, they had a major talent gap in the Sales and Development area. So, these talent gaps can be viewed just by doing, as we were talking about before, simple monthly discussions with the supervisors and direct reports. But also, theres other things out there like your 360 organizational assessments, and even the Myers Briggs in a way, that will help you to understand which personality types are, and are not, represented within your organization. And sometimes those personality types are attributed to finance, versus sales, versus human resources, etc.I also had another particular organization I thought I would highlight, a German family business in Europe. You see the prevalence of family businesses much more frequently in Europe than you do here in the United States. This is a 2 billion dollar German family business which makes pneumatic and hydraulic controls for robotic applications. They mostly do stuff in the food industry, but theyre also serving the electronics industry and the automotive industry. Theyre very strong in Europe and not so strong in the U.S. Having a team here in the U.S. of about half a dozen people, they were really going after the what we call big three Ford, GM, and Chrysler for programs in the United States. What they quickly realized is that the American automotive industry is no longer just in the United States, and these organizations that may be head-quartered here in the Detroit area, are doing business and launching programs all over the world. So, they quickly found that the American executives here were not the best focus to help develop business in South America. And right now, South America Brazil specifically is quite a boom area and as it applies to the automotive industry, is significantly increasing as well. So, they really wanted to have an executive join their team a sales executive to help them grown and nurture that business in South and Central America. So, these were just gaps that were realized as they looked at the revenue streams and saw that they were missing out on that particular revenue.I just want to quickly go back to the item about assessment tools. As I recall, another client of mine that actually missed out on a number of good candidates because they were too strictly adhering to their tool, and not looking at candidates. I think thats very important also. You have to look at candidates holistically.One of the other ways that you can really stay in tune with how youre developing your succession plan, and developing your team, is to be plugged in to some other information-sharing organizations. So I listed some here. One is Vestige formally known as Tech, which is an organization of business leaders across the United States. Theres usually a Vestige group in every state, and they have several different groups. They start with the business-owners groups, or business leader group, which is the CEO or president. They meet monthly in a confidential set ting with a facilitator. And they will sit and talk about strategic business issues in a confidential setting. You will be sitting in a room with people from many different organizations and different industries. There are no duplicate industries in the same room. And this will be a group that youll be involved with for years and years. Its very helpful to me to hear how other organizations deal with strategic issues. And it helps me to uncover gaps just by hearing how other organizations address it. They also have something called a Key Group, which may be a good group for your managers to get involved with, because managers can hear about other leadership and management tools from other organizations without fear of sitting in the same room with the competition. So thats very, very helpful. And of course for the HR people, there is SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, and there is a ton of information on that website about succession planning and how to uncover gaps. S o those are two very important organizations to check out.As far as retention strategy, its really asking yourself the question, Why do people stay with you? Today we all know that career mobility has really heightened and changed from 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. And we really want to find out what keeps people happy and give them more of it. So talk a little bit here, theres a internal questionnaire, and this really could be something as simple as a paper and pencil assessment. Or can be something as complicated as, theres a local company here called E-Price which will survey your employees and give you some ideas why theyre sticking around. They also have Survey Monkey, I think does this, and theres organizations that go on and on and on.So I saw one of my clients quickly realize that a VP was really managing their team by the senior intimidation. It was due to this very item, this internal questionnaire, that they discovered they were quashing the creativity and growth of their direct report. So I think that today, with all the things that we have to do in business, and to stay so busy, and stay on top of everything with our Blackberries and iPhones, sometimes we lose sight of whats going on with maybe two steps below us? So, these sort of questionnaires can help to uncover what is going on in the organization. Of course it has to be done in a very confidential fashion. People cant feel like theres going to be any retribution, and they do have to see some follow-up, because, otherwise its just an exercise in futility.The thing that we see in family businesses is that the good news is the same with the bad news. In family businesses, turnover is low. So this can be a good thing. This can also be a bad thing. It could be a good thing because you found a lot of institutional knowledge. People become very proficient in their area, and their industry. Could become a bad thing because youre not growing, and staying stagnant in certain technology or other areas, and these sort of questionnaires will uncover things.I was going to do another poll here but this is probably the easiest question out there which most people have already answered. The number one reason why people leave jobs is not money, its not benefits, its not vacation time, its their boss. This is a helpful retention strategy, keep that in mind as youre managing your people.Moving forward. It really takes a special kind of leader that can see around corners, and understand whats going to come next in the industry. Many of our clients were quite happy that they saw the mobile apps business boom and kind of tied their kite to it, and had a lot of success carrying them forward into a different technology. But not everybody saw that coming. So thats just kind of an example of seeing around corners. But how do you, as a professional try to leverage that as much as possible? (This could be as simple as an RSS feed and theres many different apps and I wont go through all of th em I particularly like and Im going to talk about a couple of different things but, indeed.com which helps me to track changes and rules and responsibilities within organizations.) You can play around with that a little bit.The bureau of labor and statistics, which I believe is just bls.gov put out by the federal government has a lot of good definitions and you may uncover some new and different rules in there.Got to give a nod to our host of course, Monster, we go there all the time to see whos posting for what, and tracking changes. And then, outside of those things, how do you educate yourself? And I find these magazines like The Futurist or Wired, helps you to keep your mind kind of fresh, and thinking outside the box. I actually get these ? quite a bit, because Im a bit of a sci-fi nut and I like my Star Trek. As a matter of fact, Mr ? called? a lot of stuff that we were using in business today. So even something as oddball as that and I am one of those oddballs, can help you stay in the front of any future strategies and rules and responsibilities.The next item has to do with a talent folder. I think that this is something that people really overlook quite often. Certainly being here in Detroit with such a severe unemployment, I like to tell everybody we are back on the come-back trail and things are very much happening in Detroit right now, which is good news. But for several years there were a lot of people in transition. Which is just a polite way of saying, They were out of jobs. And it has always been a strategy of our firm and our clients to met with those individuals who approach companies looking for employment. Take the opportunity to build what we call, a talent folder. You never know when a succession issue can strike you between the eyes. A lot of the things in the previous slides that I was talking about, has to do with how to plan and organize your company, in order to develop and grow. This particular type of succession planning with a t alent folder, is kind of a stop-gap measure, because you never know when something might change. Or when you can go back to that talent folder, reach in and find a gem, and fill some gaps. So when people come to you, meet with them. And I know that maybe one a month, is better than none a month, so we advise our clients to do that all the time.Theres also constant changes in employee awareness and support. So what are they concerned about? What did they see coming down the pike? And really, the answers are within your organization. If you take the time to talk to them and understand what they see, youll actually uncover a lot of great opportunities for you to grow, and expand in different areas.Well I kind of breezed through that information very quickly, sorry about that Randy. But I think weve come to the QA section, and see if anybody has any ideas that they want to fire away at me.All right. Well, thanks so very much for your expertise. For sharing your knowledge with us. Im goi ng to ask Sharon, our operator to ask if theres any questions on the phone line and then well get to some of the questions that have been typed down.So, while were waiting for some questions over the phone. Some of the questions that have been typed in. Well start with those. One says, How can you judge if a person would be good for the next level before they get there?laughter.The simple answer is, they ask you. Usually people self-select. So folks that are very motivated to grow will verbalize that to you. But more importantly, than just somebody self-selecting, you really have to look at their behaviors, because behaviors speak louder than words. So what are they doing to advance the business? Are they helping people in different divisions or departments? Are they looking at potential opportunities for growth within your business? What added value are they doing above and beyond their job description? And that really is going to tell you if they have akill ability which is the b uzz term people use.We have another question that asks us, Do succession planning strategies differ by industry? Im in health care.Yes, indeed it does. We have an individual here who focuses on search in the health care industry, and as she relates to me the projects that shes working on, I see a very thorough approach to succession planning in health care. So, as I said at the beginning of the presentation, really most of my work is with family businesses and family businesses deal with some obvious succession planning issues. But certainly, I would say that health care, just at the top of my mind, since the person asked, has to be one of the most thoroughly approached as far as succession planning is concerned. Theres a number of publicly traded companies that focus on this as well. One of the very large tier ones, I will not mention the name. I visited with them a number of years ago and I asked them about their succession planning. What would happen if something happened to the VP? Unfortunately, that does happen. Who would take their place and continue to grow and move the business? And I kind of got a blank stare. They werent really prepared for it. And so, I fear for those organizations that dont have their succession plan, who dont pay attention to this. Because it could be a business killer.We have a question that asks, At what point should an organization consider removing a boss when they are assess retention or the creativity, productivity are direct reports?Can you repeat the question?Sure. I think someone is forcing a succession plan here.laughter It says, At what point should an organization consider removing a boss when they assess retention or the creativity and productivity of their direct reports?Interesting. I think the French call this a Coup detat. This is something that its sounds like almost an ad agency or for something especially creativity. It depends on the organization. Ive worked with companies that were employee owned, were ESOPs , employee owned companies, and in that sort of instance, the company actually has a built in power to do just that, and Ive seen that happen with a President who was stifling creativity. It was actually a design engineering firm and they ousted him. It happened. If theres not an ESOP in place, what you have to do is make a case. Its very difficult if youre going over someones head but if you take a moment to assess the business implications of what youre doing, if youre looking at dollars and cents and revenue and profit, and you can make a case, well I would imagine, and Im just kind of spit-balling here, but I would imagine that the board of directors or owners of the company would be very interested in those findings. But you have to be very factualabout it. Be very careful.Can I ask Sharon if theres any questions over the phone line?I do have a question coming from the line of Mark Tyson. Please proceed.Yeah, I guess I heard part of it in the beginning but Where one begins in a succession planning in a small not for profit organization, do you begin with identifying the candidates that you propose might be on a fast track, or do you begin by looking more clearly or closely to identify the attributes needed for the various senior management jobs?Good question Mark. I would actually start a level above that and just kind of understand the organization as a whole first doing a 360. Then you can kind of break it down to the two steps that youre talking about, because once you do your 360, then youre going to understand where your gaps are. The next step would be to determine what knowledge, skills, abilities, personality traits, etc., attributes I believe as you said fit within the organization. And then you can take the step down, look internally at who you have, and do they fit into the organism that youre describing. Then if not, you have to look externally.Okay. Do that rather than try to sell the gaps in their backgrounds in order to bring them up to s peed for the K.S.As that you need.Well if folks are open to the continued development and education, thats fantastic, but does the education fit in with what your organization needs? Somebody wants to go back to school and be an engineer, and youre an advertising agency, how is that going to help you? Or youre talking about non-profit firms. So if somebody wants to go back and be an engineer and youre a charity, how is that going to help your organization?Right. Okay, thank you.Yes, absolutely. Thank you for the question Mark.Im showing no further questions at this time.All right. Well thank you Sharon. We have plenty that are coming through Webex so well go back to some of the questions that have been typed in. We have a question here that asks, Do you have an example of a succession plan that was very successful that we can use for our management?An example of a succession plan that you can use for your management. One fourth-generation business just did a very sound and thorough assessment of their entire team. And I think that in relation to this question, each succession plan is just different. It depends on your organization. But as long as youre starting at the top and coming down, then its going to lead to a success. Im kind of thinking of the examples that Ive given, for instance the company that makes the owners manuals. They have a very thorough management approach. And in particular, in one sector they realized that a person who was retiring was needed to mentor a little bit more. So they realized that in the next generation, they wanted to bring somebody in who could really mentor the team and take the team to the next level. So, it kind of really just depends on each organization. Sorry about that. Its hard to address that without having a little bit more criteria.I know. Sometimes its hard without some additional background information. Somebodys asking a question. I think it refers to our polls. We did a poll on assessment tools and it says, Wh at other assessments tools are available and is there one thats better suited for small business?Yeah, if you go to Google and type in assessment tool you just ruined your day. Youre going to be there for a long time so there are just a myriad out there, and each one is different. Now, it really depends on what works best for your organization. Another big one out there called the DISC is used by a lot of people. And this is a tool thats also good for 360 viewpoints of your organizations. I particularly like the Gallup poll one that Marcus Buckingham uses in his book because it just its more understanding to me. Others, specifically engineers I have a lot of clients that are more engineering cultures use the predictive index because its very concise and those types of environments like concise answers. So, those are the two quick correlations I would put, but Id have to dive a little bit deeper into that. Certainly, Ive got my email up here on the screen and if that particular per son wants to email me about the type of organization you have I may be able to direct you into the specific tool that might be more applicable to your organization.All right. I have another question here that talks about, How can we convince our senior management to do succession planning if they think theyre going to be in their jobs forever?laughter. I like that one, so they got a longevity pill going around there. How do you convince them? Well, Im going to assume that question is coming from the leader of the business, but it may just be coming from somebody else on the management team. I would say its incumbent upon you just as the previous question asked to bring facts to the table. So if your competitors are going through the same issues, those sort of examples should be brought to the management team. If youre seeing other organizations having a significant amount of success because of their succession planning then eventually people will see it. Its very difficult to chan ge someones behavior patterns. My undergraduate degree is in psychology and my professors would always tell me, Therapys great, but people are never going to change unless they want to. So youve got to just provide examples and hope that they see it. Cramming it down their throats is not a recipe for success.All right. We also have another question that just says, Who should be involved in a succession planning and in a succession process?Everyone. The entire organization. You do start at the top of course, and since most of my clients are family businesses and they really dont exceed 500 employees, its easier for me to say everyone. So some of you on the line may be from organizations that have thousands and thousands of employees, that becomes a little more herculean. But as long as youre starting at the top so the CEO, President of the organization, and management team really are the ones who should start this. And it should be a value that is woven throughout the organization, b ecause if the organization is interested in surviving beyond 10 to 20 years, they must think about succession planning. We always point to my father who was so smart in his succession planning because he hired me. That was a pretty easy succession plan. Our organization is small with eight people so it becomes a little easier. In the bigger organizations youve got to leave it to the management team.Sharon do we have any more questions on the phone lines?Im sorry. No further questions at this time.All right. Then I just have one more question here and that was Irvine. So the last question here is, What are some of the pitfalls of succession planning and how we avoid them?The main pitfall is the first item that I discussed. That theres a nominal balance here misunderstanding with the term succession planning. So if your organization starts to look at this, its very easy to get bogged down in the legal issues, of the accounting issues that are tied up with succession planning, and not on the people issues. So I would say that the main pitfall is a loss of focus. We all know about scope creep, and we all know that these sort of projects can just spiral out of control. So its great to just take it in small bites and focus on just very key areas. Maybe just starting with the development plan for your key executive and moving from there. So staying focused is the biggest pitfall.All right. Well at this time, I dont see any more questions on the line, so Im going to end our webinar. Id like to again thank Todd for sharing his expertise with us today. Im going to conclude our event. A recording of this event as well as the presentation materials will be available shortly on our hiring site hiring.monster.com. Everything is available under the Resource Center tab. Thanks again very much everyone for joining us. Join us again on May 25th for our webinar on the Myth and Power of Social in acquiring the best talent. Thanks very much. Have a great day everyone.Thank you.