Tag Archives: Incumbent

What are Best Practices in Succession Planning? Four Ideas

Situation: A company wants to create a succession plan for key roles. Historically they haven’t had succession plans, but they are actively looking at candidates, skill sets, and so forth. The CEO wants to be able to make a recommendation to the Board. What are best practices in succession planning?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Start with job and role descriptions. Select internal candidates for the positions and offer trial opportunities to assess their capabilities.
    • Test potential successors with projects to see if they can rise to the level of the higher responsibility. It may take more than one try to assess this.
    • Along the way you may discover hidden talents possessed by some of your employees.
  • Start with your incumbents. One of their responsibilities should be to identify possible inside candidates as successors for their positions, and to create a profile of qualifications for outside candidates. This should also be part of their job descriptions.
  • Succession candidates must desire the responsibility of the higher position. Don’t assume that everyone will want this. Some will be very good in their current role. Trying to force them to advance in responsibility can be counterproductive.
  • Do not assume that an outsider with a good resume and industry connections can fill the role of an insider who knows the company and its products and services.

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How Can a Small Company Compete Against Bigs? Four Strategies

Interview with Sai Gundavelli, CEO, Solix Technologies

Situation: A company has top talent and a better technology solution. However their large competitors continue to compete by discrediting them – “nobody was every fired for choosing IBM!” How do you compete effectively against large incumbents?

Advice from Sai Gundavelli:

  • Invest in your product.
    • Work to attain best-of-breed status in your industry with a constant focus on and investment in building a great technology. Solix’s constant goal is to be the technology leader in information lifecycle management and Data Privacy.
    • Be organic and focus on integration, smooth operation and scalability. Build your system from the ground up. An organically designed solution where the pieces work seamlessly offers higher and more efficient performance.
  • Invest in alliances.
    • Solix continually invests in our partnerships, including our OEM relationship with Oracle Financial Services, and we have more such partnerships in the works that will help us expand our presence in the market. Partnerships increase your presence and visibility as you scale your own organization.
  • Focus your efforts.
    • We at Solix are 100% focused on our product, whereas our large competitors are juggling multiple priorities, like a juggler trying to keep a large number of balls in the air. While we are smaller, this allows us to more effectively focus our efforts without lots of conflicting priorities. We focus exclusively on information life cycle management and Data Privacy.
  •  Have others talk about you.
    • Solix’s answer to our competition is let our customers speak for us. We have many happy customers such as Honeywell, Duke Energy, American Tires, who are happy to participate in joint webinars and customer case studies. We work closely with them on the latest developments and direction and use their feedback to guide future product direction.

Key Words: Technology, Solution, SMB, Competition, Multinational, Incumbent, Product, Scalability, Flexibility, Alliance, Partnership, Focus, Specialize, Detail, Reference, Credibility

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