Written By: Mahmoud Mansi

Organizations can succeed in executing an efficient workforce plan, hiring the right talent, retaining its employees, but without an effective and strategic succession plan, the organization will not perform as good as it is performing today in its further future.

In the process of succession planning, many organizations face a challenge in defining the future competencies, preparing their young leaders to become senior ones, and setting metrics to measure their leadership development initiatives.

The Human Capital Institute (HCI), offers its Leadership Development & Succession Strategist (LDSS) two-day Certification Program in online and offline formats with a clear objective: “To apply HCI’s Strategic Leadership Readiness Model to enhance organizations’ leadership development and succession strategies, processes, policies, and programs.”

Throughout the application of the Strategic Leadership Readiness Model, it will help you make concrete decisions on identifying which business strategy your organization is, establishing the new leadership roles needed to sustain the business competitive edge, defining the talents and competencies needed for these roles, deciding whether to “buy”, “build”, “borrow”, “bind”, “bounce” or “balance” the needed talents, and selecting the candidates eligible for succession planning, etc… in addition to synchronizing between different plans in the HR department, for example connecting hiring and training plans to serve a bigger purpose.

The training program is embedded with a series of workshops where you will work in groups to use tools like environmental scan, SWOT analysis, talent segmentation, competency assessments, blended leadership development approaches, and others to create a tangible plan for your own organization. This makes it much easier to implement the certification outcome in real work.

One of the very interesting tables shared in the course is the “Future Trends in Leadership Development” which tackles many interesting concepts such as vertical vs. horizontal leadership development, encouraging self-learning and giving employees the development ownership, collective leadership approaches, in addition to action plans to support such initiatives.

Leadership & Employee Engagement is key for the success of every organization, yet through the LDSS course you realize that “engagement” on its own is not sufficient if it is not correlated to a clear and measurable Leadership Development Plan. The “HCI Talent Management Lifecycle” shows the bigger picture and practically reveals how to align the Business Strategy with the Human Capital Strategy along with the Business Results where ROI is easily measured.

According to study shared during the course “85% feel the urgent need to accelerate the development of leaders”, and as HR Leaders we are always responsible and enthusiastic to proactively resolve such threads and lead development strategies.

The LDSS Certification Program is designed – but not exclusively – for the current roles:

– HR Practitioner, Manager, and Leader

– HR Business Partner

– Director of Learning

– Learning and Development Manager

– Leadership Development Manager

– Human Capital Consultant

– Anyone who supports the identification, preparation, and deployment of talent for critical roles