Section Threefunctional areas in many companies, one promising approach
for developing potential successors for positions of the future
may be to assign them leadership responsibilities in cross-
functional teams. Nonetheless, current executives may be
hesitant to make selection decisions on projections of future
skill requirements that are difficult to quantify.^52 A related
difficulty is revealed in the following account:
It becomes extremely difficult for top
management to have confidence that they are
selecting successors with this new profile when
there are no data they can trust. Before, when
executives were selecting successors in their own
image, the data were less important, since they
could use their own intuition, a sense that “he’s
one of us.” (And he usually was a he.)^53To the extent that succession planning is participatory
and plans are incorporated into career development sessions,
there may be reduced turnover of valued managers. For those
informed that they are next in line for a position, there may be
a motivational effect as well as an enhanced likelihood that
they will remain with the organization.^54