Diverse succession planning: Lessons from the industry leaders

Although practitioners and academics alike have argued for succession planning practices that facilitate better talent identification and creation of stronger "bench strength," there has been little attention to the incorporation of gender and racial diversity with succession planning. We discuss practices and competencies for incorporating diversity with succession planning and identify methods for developing women and minorities as successors for key positions. Improvements in strategy, leadership, planning, development, and program management processes are suggested. Recommendations for process improvement are developed from the diversity and succession planning literatures and interviews of 27 human resource professionals from a broad range of industries. (c) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.