Those of us here in Indianapolis are still in disbelief that football season is over for us here in Colts’ country.
What will we do on Sunday afternoons? What will we wear on Friday’s? How will we end our emails with something other than, Go Colts!
But since Colts' fans are no longer Super bowl bound, they have now turned their focus to speculate whether Coach Dungy will return for a seventh season. Just like in the corporate world, national football teams must answer the age old hiring question –
Is this the time for succession planning or an outside search?
If Dungy leaves, owner Jim Irsay and president Bill Polian will need to decide if it's time for a new direction and hire an outsider or promote one of the other coaches within their team who they think will maintain the current success.
Either way, this will be a critical decision for the Colts. Succession planning is designed to groom your bench strength by putting strong performers in several key positions within the organization. In the corporate world, we do it all the time. Sometimes we do it more successfully than others.
In one of my previous blogs, I described how Eli Lilly and Co did it well when they needed a CEO and tapped John Lechleiter. He held numerous jobs in his 29 years with the company and spent more than a year as the understudy for former CEO Sidney Taurel. Sometimes one individual hasn’t been targeted, but rather a small pool of internal candidates may vie for the spot such as at Wellpoint. Other times an outsider is brought in, typically when there is a need for the organization to take a new direction because the current approach is not working well.
The Colts’ organization has good bench strength in their coaches, so my guess is they would select someone internally.
However, we’d all like to see Dungy lead the Colts onto the field at the new Lucas Oil Stadium next season. So we hope that he will be able to find a way to balance both his family and the Colts as he has brought excellent leadership to the organization.
