Succession Planning 2

One of the corollaries of Anne's last post on succession planning in government is this: there is lots of talent in your town or your region that would improve your organization. Where are you looking for your next manager hire?

The default thought might be to find a public health graduate program, of course. But the next person hired as a manager in local public health is probably not coming straight out of a school of public health.

I talk to health directors frequently, at trainings and at national meetings. Even if you are lucky enough to be located near a big school of public health (and most aren't) you will find it hard to recruit graduates of those programs to do community-level health work. Most of the MPH grad students I run into in Chapel Hill, for instance, are aiming for jobs in healthcare, or policy jobs in DC, or international work, or research, or teaching.

Luckily, public health has room for talented managers from all kinds of different educational backgrounds. Great, hard-working, public-spirited managers in your town may be waiting for your call. Certainly there are folks out there who could help you do some of the things you need to do: assess the community, assure quality and access, develop policies to create more. Local knowledge is kind of an important selling point, actually.

Our book is based on the idea that government and non-profit organizations are trying to learn best practices around planning and efficiency and quality from other sectors. Recruiting is a powerful way to help your organization learn. So I would argue that recruiting from outside is actually important-- not just something to settle for.

Yes, these new hires will need to be oriented to population health and trained in that perspective. Again, lots of adult education resources and programs are available to help you do that--including some that are entirely on-line.

--Steve Orton