William J. Rothwell wrote an article entitled “Replacement planning: a starting point for succession planning and talent management.” This article develops the steps to implementing a successful replacement plan and then furthers these points by incorporating a case study. This case study is an essential part to this article as it allows the readers to experience, first-hand, what it takes to implement a replacement plan. The case study also brings out problems that may occur during the process. Afterward, Rothwell addresses these issues and brings about a solution. Rothwell does a very good job of organizing this article, incorporating many different sources, and drawing the reading in to encourage more companies to implement their own replacement …show more content…
It outlined the data they collected and the analysis they went through while developing this case study. Although boring, this section is very important to the reader as they learn the background on the case study. Throughout the discussion of the actual results of the case study, Rothwell did a very good job of discussing problems the executives stumbled upon and the route they followed to fix those problems. He incorporated the facts of the case and further developed those facts by expanding upon the information. This section of the article was very beneficial to the reader as they are able to see how a real-life company went about implementing a replacement planning program. Not only did Rothwell include issues, but he developed those issues and explained how to go about fixing them. The discussion section afterward included a multitude of Rothwell’s inferences and personal thoughts on the case study. He states, “These insights lead them toward establishing more robust succession planning and talent management programs that rely on more object decision making potential” (Rothwell 96). The ‘insights’ Rothwell discusses includes discovering which employees are ‘ready now’ and how they could incorporate outside candidates into their program. Both of these points were a problem during the case study and Rothwell was able to clear up those issues and resolve how they can …show more content…
In many of the articles I have read in the past, the biggest issue I encountered included a lack of examples to demonstrate what the author was saying. While it would have been helpful to see a few smaller examples throughout this article, the case study at the end provided the reader with a real-life example. I thought the case study strengthened the whole argument of this article as the reader could see how a real company put the replacement planning process to use. I also agree with the article’s main points. Rothwell uses many facts at the beginning of the article to demonstrate how few companies have a replacement plan in place; this made me realize how important implementing these processes are. It would be detrimental to an organization if their CEO could not longer work, due to injury or death, and they had no plan as to who he/she would be replaced with. As I read this article, I realized that implementing a replacement plan would not cost much money or take too much of an effort; it seems like an obvious choice to implement this process after reading the article. Overall, I thought Rothwell created a very strong article and it caught my attention from the