Need of Succession planning

Pranab Mukherjee has become the 13^th president of India.Being chosen the first citizen he was elated by the support given by his party members and others.The Indian presidential elections this time saw a political angle attached to it.There was lot of hype and  buzz for the candidature .But leaving Dr.Kalam nobody has done justice to the post. Srimati Prathiba patil term was reigned with controversies and we can term it as controversial legacy.So what I want to convey here is great deal of planning and many other factors should be considered while choosing the first citizen of the country .

Succession planning so to say helps in solving these issues.To define succession planning in a simple way it is a Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing internal people with the potential to fill key business leadership positions in the company. Succession planning is a way where company can find out availability of experienced and  capable employees who will be suitable to take up challenging roles/leadership roles  in a company.For example when NR Narayan murthy wanted to retire then before one year itself they started searching right candidate who will fit into the shoes of leadership position.Infosys top level management did a huge analysis and found out the suitable person who would fit into culture of Infosys and it was K.V Kamath.Similarly when Ratan Tata said enough then also top level management did a huge extensive research and found out Cyrus Mistry would be suitable for the job.These instances led to some significant changes in HR practices of company.

Infosys has started a leadership institute and also formed a internal program named Talent edge .The talent edge is internal to the company where top level management train there business heads and make them leaders and also make them ready for challenging positions.Similarly Cognizant also monitors there functional level managers and also business heads as part of succession planning .Wipro also has leadership development programns where they train,monitor and find out the future leaders.It’s sad that private companies take succession planning very seriously while President of India is choosen by the votes of MP.This system needs to change afterall change is the only constant thing which is permanent.