What if you don’t have the data? Acquiring and exploring data to initiate government programs

Abstract

Succession planning has virtually always been an activity performed in for-profit companies. However, that is changing more and more to include governmental organizations. But questions remain with regard to how succession planning in such organizations should be conducted; and, how such succession planning efforts should be evaluated. For example, in for-profit companies, succession planning is typically focused on addressing problems such as increasing profits. The fact is that governmental organizations also need revenue streams, but not in the same sense as for-profit companies. And beyond revenue, what other factors should be included in succession planning in governmental organizations. This research sought to develop a set of indicators for succession planning in governmental organizations. And, because formal succession planning in these organizations is still a relatively new activity concepts regarding the data required to develop the set of indicators also had to be developed. That is, in a very real sense this research addressed the problem of what to do if data is not readily available.