Allan H. Church

Succession Planning 2.0: building bench through better execution

Purpose – This paper aims to present nine observations about the state of succession planning and talent management (TM) practices today along with recommendations and an integrated model for enhancing the effectiveness of these efforts. Many talent management practitioners today would agree that the succession planning processes in their organizations are limited in their effectiveness. They are often seen as another complex and time-consuming human resource (HR) process, and often paper exercise, to be completed and archived until the following year. This is due to several factors, including a lack of focus on the future capabilities needed; inconsistencies in the implementation of processes designed; limited system integration of talent and succession planning efforts with other key HR and business processes; and lack of accountability for making decisions and ensuring they are fully executed. Given the importance of identifying, developing and preparing leaders for the future success of the business t...

Does Purpose Matter? The Stability of Personality Assessments in Organization Development and Talent Management Applications Over Time

Personality assessment has a long history of application in the workplace. While the field of organization development has historically focused on developmental aspects of personality tools, other disciplines such as industrial-organizational psychology have emphasized its psychometric properties. The importance of data-driven insights for talent management (e.g., the identification of high potentials, succession planning, coaching), however, is placing increasing pressure on all types of applied behavioral scientists to better understand the stability of personality tools for decision-making purposes. The current study presents research conducted with 207 senior leaders in a global consumer products organization on the use of personality assessment data over time and across two different conditions: development only and development to decision making. Results using three different tools (based on the Hogan Assessment Suite) indicate that core personality and personality derailers are generally not affected by the purpose of the assessment, though derailers do tend to moderate over time. The manifestation of values, motives, and preferences were found to change across administrations. Implications for organizational development and talent management applications are discussed.

Organization Development and Talent Management: Divergent Sides of the Same Values Equation

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the nature of the values divergence and convergence between OD and TM in more detail. After a brief introduction of the origins of the two areas of practice, we will focus first on three key areas where OD and TM differ significantly in their approach. These differences represent values dilemmas in practice, in that many OD professionals today are finding themselves either entering TM roles, offering their consulting services to organizational practitioners in TM functions in organizations (i.e., these individuals are often the gatekeepers into these areas of work in organizations today), or even competing with TM approaches for the same types of services.

Enacting Values-Based Change: Organization Development in Action

As a field, organization development (OD) is deeply grounded in a set of core values and principles of practice about how one should work with and in organizations. These perspectives are based on a wide range of theoretical influences on the evolution of the field, including social psychology, group dynamics, psychotherapy, industrial-organizational psychology, participative management, and sociology. Early OD also operationalized new management and behavioral science research that provided evidence of better ways to treat people and run organizations (see Jamieson & Gellermann, 2014, for an overview). It is also the result of a number of external forces including the social milieu of the 1950–1960s, and a response to many of the troubling organization, management, and Human Resources (HR) practices that dominated in the industrial age. At that time, overtly negative, oppressive, bureaucratic, inhumane, and unfair practices were commonplace, and OD practitioners were developing interventions and processes to drive positive changes and instill more empowering and developmental ways of managing organizations and their people. It was an uphill battle early on in the field and still is in many places; however, the values and practices of the field are a key differentiator of OD, particularly when compared to other types of management consulting and change approaches (Church & Jamieson, 2014).

A Look in the Mirror: Current Research Findings on the Values and Practice of OD

While anyone can implement a certain set of interventions, one of the key aspects that makes organization development (OD) unique is its core values. It is critical then to take the pulse of and understand the values and perceptions of practitioners in the field of OD periodically in order to understand how things have changed or stayed the same over time. Recently, we undertook such a survey research study as a follow-up to one that had been conducted back in the early 1990s. The purpose of this chapter is to summarize the key highlights of that research. While additional findings can be found elsewhere, the intent here is to focus on the highlights and reflect on what these findings tell us about the current and future state of the values inherent in the OD community today. More specifically, how have we evolved in the last 20 years and where are we heading in the future as a profession?