he Perfect Storm(s) Adapted from Chapter 14 of Rothwell, J. (2010). What is succession and planning management? In Effective succession planning (5th Ed.). AMACOM. Linda Childress is general manager of a large consumer products plant in the Midwest. She has helped her plant weather many storms. The first was a corporate-sponsored voluntary early retirement program, which began eight years ago. Because of the program, Linda lost her most experienced workers, and among its effects on the plant were costly work redistributions, retraining, retooling, and automation. The second storm was a forced layoff that occurred five years ago, driven by fierce foreign competition in consumer products. The layoff cost Linda fully one-fourth of her most recently hired workers and many middle managers, professionals, and technical employees. It also led to a net loss of protected labor groups in the plant's workforce to a level well below what had taken the company ten years of ambitious efforts to achieve. Other consequences were increasingly aggressive union actions in the plant; isolated incidents of violence against management personnel by disgruntled workers; growing evidence of theft, pilferage, and employee sabotage; and skyrocketing absenteeism and turnover rates. The third storm swept the plant on the heels