SUCCESSION PLANNING FOR ORGANIZATIONAL SUCCESS Results and Discussion on Data From Thermoforming Leaders
 
Introduction: The 23rd annual SPE Thermoforming Conference drew leaders from diverse thermoforming organizations across the globe. In a presentation on Succession Planning, Dr. Jonathan Kirschner and Rachel Benyola, M.S. spoke on how effective Succession Planning increases organizational resilience, business continuity, and maximizes long term business value.
The Competency Exercise: As part of their presentation, participants engaged a research exercise that
required choosing five top competencies among a list of 40 competencies tied to organizational success. Participants were asked to make this decision based on the specific culture and business needs of their organization. Following the seminar, participants shared their results with the presenters.
Results: Based on results from participants (N=27), five competencies were determined priority competencies for future organizational success. These competencies can be viewed in the table below. 
Rank
Competence
Description
1 Customer Focus
Ensuring strategy, operating culture, and customer facing behaviors are tailored to the specific needs of the customer
2 Team Leadership
Moving others toward a common vision through motivation, collaboration, and execution
3 Accountability
Ensuring there is follow-through on commitments and goals
4 Industry Knowledge
Knowledge of the thermo-forming industry, market trends and where growth opportunities reside
5 Decision Making
Ability to gather information and take action based on the available information
Results from this exercise suggests that customer focus is the linchpin for high performance. In other words, organizations must operate in a manner that prioritizes the customer’s needs above everything else. With Customer Focus in place, Team Leadership and Accountability were ranked number two and three respectively. Team Leadership keeps employees focused and motivated, while Accountability ensures the team follows through on their commitments. The fourth competency, Industry Knowledge suggest that its vital to not just remain inwardly focused, but to really gauge trends and opportunities outside the walls of your company. Lastly, Decision Making suggests that for highperformance, it’s not enough to simply mind the status quo. Employees need to exercise critical thinking and good judgement to take action.
Conclusions: From the warehouse to the corner office, employees in the thermoforming industry must focus on the customer, collaborate toward a common mission, and make decisions that take into consideration
information that goes beyond the walls of the employees’ organization. Based on this success profile, we can hypothesize that this recipe for success is not only highly relevant for existing staff, but also a useful criteria to use for measuring future leaders in the organization. Effective succession planning builds a talent pipeline that brings the organization the best people to drive the most longterm value for the business. It also ensures business continuity as talent inevitably transitions in and out over the lifespan of the business. Through this exercise conducted at SPE, thermoforming leaders now have a model that points to specific factors linked to organizational success. Thermoforming leaders can leverage these factors for succession planning by ensuring that future leaders possess these five factors identified for long-term business value creation.