Mark Hurd’s much-covered sudden departure from HP reinforces the urgency of solid succession management. Are you taking the right steps in IT?

On the heels of Mark Hurd’s ouster as chairman and CEO of Hewlett Packard, leadership expert Michael Watkins has a timely piece on Bloomberg BusinessWeek about succession management.

Watkins’ analysis pertains mostly to CEO succession, but it has plenty of relevance for IT leaders. For years, I found it very troubling that few companies had formal succession plans in place for functions besides the CEO role.

A recent feature in CIO Magazine explains one of the big problems with CIO succession programs: that too many of them don’t actually accomplish their goals. And then there are the classic arguments from CIOs whose companies aren’t preparing the next generation: “If we train them to do the job but the job isn’t available soon enough, they’ll take that training and put it to work elsewhere,” or, “Why should I train someone to do my job? Isn’t that putting a target on my back?”

Reasonable considerations, to be sure. But Watkins puts it in better perspective: “The sudden and unexpected loss of a CEO (or any top executive) has the potential to throw the best-performing company into a tailspin if emergency succession plans are not in place. Does your company's succession plan provide a blueprint for what will happen in the event that a senior executive dies, is disabled, or is forced from the company on short notice?”

If you answer “no” to that question, you’re putting your company and its IT operation in serious jeopardy. It’s not easy to ponder your company’s future without you, but business is business, and it lives on. Plus, if you don’t put your employees on a track—some call it a “career trajectory”—with a detailed plan for crossing the finish line, then you can bet that they’ll looking for an exit.

Does your company have a succession plan in place for IT? What are the key ingredients? If not, why not?

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