| dc.description.abstract | There is a growing leadership gap in today’s organizations. This leadership gap is preventing companies from successfully developing the leadership potential they need to remain competitive in a rapidly-changing business climate. Many experienced workers are at or nearing retirement age, the talent pool of younger professionals is much smaller and prone to higher turnover, there is less redundancy in management positions, and company loyalty is harder to inspire due to company downsizing trends and the outsourcing of services that were once a traditional part of doing business. As a result, it is becoming more and more critical that a company develops a strong and proactive succession plan for key leadership positions at all levels within the company.
One of the nation’s leading engineering, architectural and planning firms headquartered in the Kansas City metropolitan area needs to develop a proactive and effective approach to company succession planning in order to identify, retain, develop, and empower its future company leaders and sustain and grow its competitive advantage in the engineering industry. The principal purpose of this paper is to identify, evaluate and ultimately recommend strategies and applications for success for implementing an effective succession plan at this engineering firm. This paper provides an introduction to succession planning through a topic overview and background; conducts a literature review to identify key trends, themes and challenges with succession planning; makes the case for why succession planning is needed at Company A; provides insight from peer interviews to identify industry best practices; and concludes with recommendations for practical leadership succession planning tools and applications for success for possible implementation at Company A. | |
