In the ’60s, there was a television show that popularized a phrase “round ’em up, move ’em out.” In the case of the series, it was a western, and the phrase was in reference to cattle. Today, we might use the same phrase for describing two concepts that have increasing popularity in the fire service: career planning and succession planning.
Career and Succession Planning
Career planning means that a person engages in a continuous process of thinking about his life, interests, values, skills, and preferences with the idea in mind that his work fits his personal circumstances. Here is a tricky question for you: Is it the fire department’s responsibility to develop your career plan, or is it yours?
Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing personnel with potential for key leadership roles. The goal of succession planning is to ensure that there are adequate experienced and capable employees who are prepared to assume key roles once they become available. Succession planning is carried out by top-level incumbents and is part of a strategic plan for the survival of the organization. Succession planning is not the same thing as favoritism or handpicking candidates but rather is a systematic set of opportunities.
Who’s Responsible?
Now that we have defined these two, we need to discriminate between who is responsible for each. You are personally responsible for your own career plan. The leadership of your fire agency is responsible for succession planning. If one of you does your job and the other doesn’t, there is a strong potential for dysfunctional activity.
For example, what if you identify key people in the organization as part of succession planning and those same people choose to ignore the opportunity by failing to have a career plan? What happens if you have people who have invested a lot in their personal development and the department does not provide ample opportunity for those people to promote? The solution to both of these processes is balance.
All organizations, no matter the size, need to have some form of succession planning. All individuals within that organization need a career plan. Obviously, in smaller organizations, the number of candidates is minimized and in large organizations it is maximized. Nonetheless, if there is no career planning going on with personnel, even the largest of organizations can be found wanting when it comes to key positions.
The tendency in most organizations is to talk about succession planning but fail to encourage career planning. Both of these processes are often so informal that promotion, advancement, and career opportunity look more like a lottery than a plan. A more formal process of succession planning encourages a more formal process for career planning, and vice versa.
Many fire departments have developed career planning opportunities by encouraging educational reimbursement and by advocating training, education, and certification systems to highlight opportunities. Others simply accept what individuals choose based on their own perceptions of what is a good idea for preparation.
Room for Improvement
Anytime an organization must look externally to fulfill a key position, there is room for improvement in both career and succession planning in the organizational environment. Simply stated, if employees are ambitious and desirous of more responsibility and the organization fails to deliver, then their career plan will direct them to seek promotion externally. Some departments that have a very strong career planning ethic often serve as feeder departments to those that don’t.
There is an old saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” The concepts of career and succession planning are extremely useful in charting the road ahead. In a well-balanced system, there will be competition and spirited activity as part of career planning. This will lead to competition and spirited activity for the top jobs.
The individual who sits in a fire station complaining about the way things are and fails to develop a career plan may have a job but not a career. A fire department that has to continuously go outside to fill key positions may look like a fire department but is operating from a position of weakness.
