How is your succession plan working for you?
Are you creating competent leaders?
Every organization needs a solid succession plan but not many need it as much as retailers do.
While every retail management position is important, the position that is often ignored is the Assistant Store Manager.
To enable the organization to draw on the talent of their Store Managers to fill higher level positions such as District and Region Managers, it is imperative that you have a pool of Assistant Store Managers ready to step up and step in, to the Store Management positions vacated by the promoted individual.
So…
What are you doing to develop your Assistant Store Managers?
Often, expectations of Assistant Store Managers are low; just somebody there to assist the Store Manager.
While this is a real luxury and may be of great benefit to the Store Manager in terms of giving him/her more time to spend on paperwork in the backroom, which in itself is undesirable, it certainly is not the best use of your human resources.
Your Assistant Store Managers represent the next layer of leaders for your organization.
The Assistant Store Manager is meant to be of assistance to the Store Manager, to be sure. But the larger goal is for the Assistant Store Manager to be developed as a leader who can operate on his own and contribute to the organization, not just to the Store Manager he is currently working for.
The first stage of development requires that Assistant Store Managers be developed to the point that they are fully competent to profitably operate one of your stores.
Yes, they are supposed to be ready, willing and able to replace your Store Managers.
You may have some, shall we say, ‘comfortable’ Store Managers who won’t like the idea of developing and then losing good Assistants but that is irrelevant.
The goals of the organization rule.
In any case, a Store Manager who doesn’t want a strong and competent Assistant Store Manager is doing himself and the company a disservice and it will show in the calibre of the Assistants he is turning out.
Anyway, if Assistants are not competent enough to replace a Store Manager after a reasonable length of time, then something is going wrong.
Actually, a few things could be going wrong, such as:
1) Someone made a bad hire or internal promotion and did not correct the situation
2) Your training program is not working as intended
3) Your Store Manager is not participating, fully, in the development of the Assistant Store Manager
“Winning companies win because they have good
leaders who nurture the development of other
leaders at all levels of the organization.”
~ Noel Tichy
If you are not able to visualize your people development strategy working well in your organization, get the help you need.
Join The Retail Management Workshop to learn how to make it happen…and how to operate in perfect balance.
Get a winning succession plan working for you – guaranteed.
Increase sales – guaranteed.
Reduce expenses and increase profits – guaranteed.
Register yourself and/or your teams for The Retail Management Workshop being held in two great locations:
The Retail Management Workshop
(Click the link ^ for details and/or registration.)
September 18-19-20
Crowne Plaza Kensington
London, UK
October 1-2-3
Sheraton Dubai Creek
Dubai, UAE
DMSRetail 
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