Even the most recalcitrant network executives have to accept change - an admired colleague gets a well-deserved promotion, an underling takes a job elsewhere, the department is downsized and responsibilities shift. As the speed of change increases, the more apparent it becomes that having successors at the ready is as important a responsibility as providing a secure enterprise network.

Taking it to the extreme Five tips for succession planning Resource: IT career management

The concept of succession planning is straightforward enough: As individuals move up - or on - they leave voids that usually need filling. But because everyone is different, succession planning is as complex a set of variables as you'll ever be challenged to compute. It isn't just about replacing the top people. It's about the future of employees in an organization.

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Succession planning brings an obligation - identifying your replacement - and an opportunity - taking more control of your future. Indeed, succession planning is another indication that IT executives with management and business skills are in demand. These people are increasingly in succession plans for top-level corporate positions.

Chris Moody is a case in point. Moody joined Aquent as CIO in 1999 and, in 2001, advanced to COO of the global employment services firm in Boston. Succession planning isn't just a condition of his own advancement, he says. It is an integral part of managing his company and his career.

"You should always be succession planning," he says. "We have that now as part of performance management responsibility: Get training in Windows 2000, make sure procedures are well documented, ensure back-up systems are in place and provide for your own successor."

Not everyone likes the idea. Moody says he has gotten pushback from people who worry about job security and think they are more valuable if they are the only people who know their jobs. Moody suggests countering that attitude in two ways. The department should show that it values employees who take responsibility for succession planning. The other way is to point out to employees that if they don't know who can handle their jobs, they are putting the company at risk and underperforming. "That's the hardline," he says.

Taking it to the extreme

Jeff Orton, CIO of Wilsons Leather in Brooklyn Park, Minn., spent many years at General Electric, where he says succession planning was part of the culture. "It was the extreme data point. You had no worry about your career at GE. You didn't do a lot of thinking, either," he says.

Orton takes a less structured approach at Wilsons, partly to provide his staff more flexibility but also because his staff - like most organizations smaller than GE - is too thin to have successors lined up behind everyone.

Get the CEO's commitment. Succession planning takes time and money. Make sure it is a value that senior managers share. Build an understanding among your staff that everyone needs to think about who can succeed them. Succession planning is not just for top-level managers. Establish well-defined job descriptions and identify skills needed to carry them out. Make success measurable, and then measure it. Promote teamwork. You can assume a level of competitiveness among staff members. They need to know that no one can succeed alone and that leaders can manage competitive energy. Engage your top performers in the succession planning process early. Your best people will always have opportunities to go elsewhere. Let them know you realize they always have a choice.

Orton identifies two keys to managing succession planning. You must talk openly with employees about their potential (and how to live up to it), and you must develop recognized measures that are applied uniformly to support succession decisions. Some of these measures identify levels of technical expertise. Others rate less easily calibrated attributes such as communication skills and attitude.

As succession planning becomes an established discipline, the power to decide who succeeds whom stops being a dark science practiced behind closed doors. It becomes an open system of evaluation that includes recognized measures of accountability and performance, says Nancy Monson, a senior consultant with the Hagberg Consulting Group. Succession planning also systematically reinforces the cooperative and collaborative attitudes that are increasingly recognized as the characteristics of good leaders.

"The speed of change and the risks involved have made it necessary to have a more objective and systematic way of managing human capital," she says.

"The better we all get at this, the less personal it becomes," Orton says. Still, he adds, "A lot of emotion comes into play. You can't get to the place where you've eliminated judgment."

Kindley is a freelance writer in Torrington, Conn. He can be reached at mark@5thbusiness.net.

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