Untitled - Saigontre

Preface to the Third Edition
xix
course, that is much too limited a view. The goal is to get the work done and
not replace people. There are many ways to get the work done.
▲ Growing Awareness of Technical Succession Planning. While succession
planning is typically associated with preparing people to make vertical
moves on the organization chart, it is also possible to think about individuals
such as engineers, lawyers, research scientists, MIS professionals, and other
professional or technical workers who possess specialized knowledge. When
they leave the organization, they may take critically important, and proprietary,
knowledge with them. Hence, growing awareness exists for the need to do
technical succession planning, which focuses on the horizontal level of the
organization chart and involves broadening and deepening professional
knowledge and preserving it for the organization’s continued use in the future.
▲ Continuing Problems with HR Systems. HR systems are still not up to
snuff. As I consult in this field, I see too little staffing in HR departments,
poorly skilled HR workers, voodoo competency modeling efforts, insufficient
technology to support robust applications like succession, and many other
problems with the HR function itself, including timid HR people who are unwilling
to stand up to the CEO or their operating peers and exert true leadership
about what accountability systems are needed to make sure that managers
do their jobs to groom talent at the same time that they struggle to get today’s
work out the door.
Still, my professional colleague was right in the sense that the world continues
to face the crisis of leadership that was described in the preface to the
first and second editions of this book. Indeed, ‘‘a chronic crisis of governance—that
is, the pervasive incapacity of organizations to cope with the expectations
of their constituents—is now an overwhelming factor worldwide.’’ 1
That statement is as true today as it was when this book was first published in
1994. Evidence can still be found in many settings: Citizens continue to lose
faith in their elected officials to address problems at the national, regional, and
local levels; the religious continue to lose faith in high-profile church leaders
who have been stricken with sensationalized scandals; and consumers continue
to lose faith in business leaders to act responsibly and ethically. 2 Add to
those problems some others: people have lost faith that the media like newspapers
or television stations, now owned by enormous corporations, tell them
the truth—or that reporters have even bothered to check the facts; and patients
have lost faith that doctors, many of whom are now employed by large
profit-making HMOs, are really working to ‘‘do no harm.’’
A crisis of governance is also widespread inside organizations. Employees
wonder what kind of employment they can maintain when a new employment
contract has changed the relationship between workers and their organizations.
Employee loyalty is a relic of the past, 3 a victim of the downsizing craze