When a company calls in a Gallup expert or two to talk about succession planning, those experts don't want to see biographies or résumés. And they certainly don't want to see potential hires. They want to see three or four dry erase boards.

That's because succession planning involves much more than filling in boxes on an organizational chart. If it's done right -- done scientifically -- succession planning creates a pool of leadership talent that can drive an organization, engage employees, and increase shareholder value. Developing the schematics of that plan takes a few dry erase boards, though, because a solid succession plan starts and ends with leadership, and there's a lot of territory to cover between those two points.

The first step involves a thorough diagnosis of the leadership talent a company has -- and a profound understanding of the talent it needs. It also requires taking a close look at the company's employees to assess their leadership potential. As Randall Beck, a senior managing partner for Gallup, explains in the following interview, this scientific approach can help an organization identify at least three solid internal candidates for every position. It also helps a company take a disciplined approach to assessing, developing, and hiring leaders. Succession planning is more than finding warm bodies to replace key personnel. It involves building a perpetual motion machine to find leaders. That takes analysis and strategy -- and three or four dry erase boards.

GMJ: What's wrong with hiring the person with the best looking résumé for a leadership role?

Randall Beck: That's a quick and easy way to fill an empty spot, but it won't help your business increase its capacity or its growth. That's closer to crisis management than it is to a real succession plan. For example, companies spend a lot of time trying to manage things like revenue, profit, productivity, or sales. To do that, they generally consider them independently: What can I do to move employee engagement? I'll do action planning. What can I do to increase revenue? I'll hire more salespeople. What can I do to move people up? I'll do development programs.

But what can you do to improve all of those things at the same time? Improve your organization's leadership. If you can increase the leadership strength in an organization, all those other numbers should go up. All in all, that's an easier way for organizations to drive their business outcomes.

GMJ: So you're saying that succession planning is more than just figuring out who the next CEO ought to be -- it's diagnosing the overall health of your company and using leadership to improve that.

Beck: Right -- because the process of making organizations better is driven by leaders. How strong are your leaders? How many of them do you have? Do you have employees who have the potential to be leaders? What are you doing to turn their potential into success? How are you carrying those leaders into the future? Those are the first questions to answer. Once you know how many potential leaders you have versus how many you need, you can draft a strategy to go out and find them.

GMJ: But you can always hire outside leaders with track records.

Beck: When companies ask whether they should hire from the outside or from the inside, no matter what they decide, they usually arrive at the answer for the wrong reasons. They'll either say, "We only hire from within" or "We only go outside when we need certain skills."

When you hire from the outside, you don't know if the person you hire will assimilate into your organization's culture, and you don't know if his or her experience will translate into effective leadership in your industry. In my experience, it takes at least three years to assimilate with an organization, and nobody has three years to wait for a leader to understand what's going on. Leaders in a new role don't have a thousand days to prove themselves -- they have about a hundred days. So if it takes a thousand days for somebody to assimilate to an organization, but they only have a hundred days to prove they can lead, that's a formula for disaster.