Pepperdine Graziadio Professor Kevin Groves Quoted in Credit Union Magazine on Succession Planning

Kevin Groves, Ph.D., professor of organization theory and management at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School was recently quoted in Credit Union Magazine on the importance of succession planning. Dr. Groves says that organizations will need to annually ensure that their succession plan is tightly connected to the business strategy. He stresses that changes in the competitive environment and shifts in your industry impact which positions are critical, what new position. Groves says implicit or unconscious bias is inherent in any judgment of an individual’s executive potential and must be minimized as much as possible. “The knowledge that executives and other professionals have many implicit or unconscious biases is not new,” but it’s becoming clear how teams need to proceed to reduce such bias, explains Groves. “If you’re an executive team, what you don’t want is a single team member having a say as to how you look at the next level down in the organization—for example, if only the CFO can pass judgment on how he or she looks at the other finance talent in the organization. “Calibration ensures that the (members of the) entire executive team at the C-suite level all have relevant input.”

The full article is available on Credit Union Magazine (article starts on page 22).