Management Succession Planning for Family Businesses

Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) partnered with two vendors, each providing different services:
1. Success Factors provides a talent management software and framework
2. Personal Decisions International (PDI) offers leadership competency models and the development library embedded within Career Tracks.

Out of CRP’s 16,000-employee population, approximately 3,500 are non-union employees. Not long ago, CPR tracked talent development by hand for a much smaller group of people. The software has allowed them to track their entire non-union workforce.

A PDI leadership competency model is mapped to each of the nine non-union positions, and each employee has a profile where their employer can learn what he or she wants from their career. The software allows for management of one’s own career as well as succession planning, and the company philosophy for those on the front line is “you own your career.”

The software incorporates past work experience, leadership competencies, willingness and next career path steps. Historically, Canadian Pacific Railway has promoted from within and this is a practice to be preserved in the future.

When moving employees to middle management and above, CPR used succession planning and captured the information in Career Tracks. Employees not only have the ability to ess themselves, but managers can also ess their employees. Statistics can then be pulled off to see where they are collectively weak or strong at any competency level. Using this method, CPR can find the top players in each competency and determine whether they need to address the weaker competencies with training.

Duration : 0:3:24

Recommended Reading

• Management Succession Planning for Family Businesses
• William Rothwell, Ph.D. – Talent Management Basics
• Reasons Why an Estate Plan Can Go Awry – Hull on Estate and Succession Planning #146
• The Positive Side of the Second Marriage – Hull on Esate and Succession Planning
• Management Succession Planning Blueprint (ebook)

Technorati Tags: Canadian, Corporate, CorpU, e-learning, Greg, Holsworth, HR, Leadership, Learning, Pacific, Performance, Railway, Training

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