Most organizational interventions fail to achieve their objectives. The reasons are both clear and avoidable. Synnabar Consulting has developed its own proprietary model of how Organizations (and the people within them) change:

Defining Tomorrow
A strategic process for inventing the future. Who do we want to be?

Assessing Today
Taking stock. Employing state-of-the-art methodologies to understand who we are today. How are we doing?

Making the Change
Producing a plan distilled from our understanding of the gap between who/where we are and who/where we want to be. Implementing that plan.

Measuring Progress
Reassessing where we are, re-evaluating where we want to be, refining the plan, and continuing the implementation.

Achieving the Right Balance

The trick is to achieve the right balance between strategic planning and implementation. As always, Synnabar Consulting custom designs its solutions. We can either guide an organization through every step of the change process, or we can design and implement one or more specific stages.

A representative sample of Synnabar Consulting's organizational change processes and programs.

• Strategy Development Facilitation
• Organizational Audits
• Organization Surveys
• Strategy Implementation
• Culture Alignment
• M&A Alignment
• Culture Change
• Change Management
• Ethical Communities
• Succession Planning
• Mobilizing Communication
• Metrics That Matter

Programs for HR and OD professionals:

• Influencing Organizational Practice
• Individual Development: an overview
• Organizational Development: an overview

Perhaps one of the most important tools for maintaining an organization’s long term stability and growth is a rigorous succession planning process.

Overview

There is a good deal known about how to select leaders. There are well over 7,000 books, articles, and presentations on leadership, and some reasonable consensus has emerged about the key issues. Research points to the following set of predictors as the most reliable and valid indicators of leadership potential:

Effective predictor 1
Actual performance of the candidate’s team or organizational unit. Therefore, evaluate real-time performance data.

Effective predictor 2
Peer, supervisor, and subordinate feedback on the candidate’s effectiveness for high predictive validity. For example, it’s been demonstrated that subordinate ratings are as effective as (and much less expensive than) assessment center data in predicting managerial performance seven years later. Therefore, use 360° instruments as a key component of the assessment process.

Effective predictor 3
The presence of derailment factors in the candidate’s profile. Therefore, look for tendencies to over control, exploit, micro-manage, resist using appropriate consequences, or to be arrogant, political, egotistical, irritable, passive-aggressive, vindictive, abrasive, insensitive, or aloof. All are proven correlates of managerial careers that flounder, stall, or derail.

Effective predictor 4
Cognitive ability and four specific personality characteristics account for most of the variance in leadership effectiveness. Therefore, measure the following psychological characteristics:

Intellectual virtuosity: broad range of interests, creative, broad-minded, curious, open to experience, and raw intellectual horsepower.

Conscientiousness: prudent, will to achieve, responsible, solid integrity, strong work ethic, planful and organized.

Surgency: extraverted, assertive, high-energy, fluent speaker, desire to advance, eager decision maker, and persuasive- ”leaderlike.”

Emotional stability: self-confident, self-accepting, balanced, stress resistant, tolerant of uncertainty, graceful under pressure, flexible, and effective at handling conflict and negative feedback.

Agreeableness: diplomatic, cooperative, empathic, friendly, effective communicator, trusting, and good-natured.

Synnabar Consulting’s six step Succession Planning Process:

1. Analyze Top Jobs, Future Jobs, and Critical Success Factors
2. Interview and Test the Candidates
3. Feedback Meeting with Candidate
4. Consult with Candidate’s Manager
5. Facilitate Development Plan
6. Exploit Executive Development and Succession Plan Best Practices

Request our
Succession Planning
white paper

Contact us for a no-charge, exploratory discussion of either our template or our custom designed products and services.