What happens when a key leader suddenly leaves your organization? Without a solid succession plan, companies face disruption, loss of critical knowledge, and a scramble to fill the gap. While most leaders realize the importance of succession planning, it often gets sidelined until it’s urgent. The best organizations recognize that future-proofing their leadership pipeline is not important—it’s essential.
Succession planning identifies talent gaps to inform future talent needs and hiring. It aligns leadership qualities and competencies, identifies development opportunities, and creates career paths that promote retention. When done well, loss of knowledge is prevented, employee engagement improves, organizations get to know employees better, and may discover unexpected, qualified candidates.
Start Before It’s Urgent
Succession planning should be proactive, not reactive. The ideal time to start is when an organization is doing well and there is no urgency. Incorporating it into regular performance and talent development conversations and embedding it as an effective and predictable process- in advance of key leadership departures – helps ensure organizational buy-in.
Organizations must prepare for two succession scenarios:
- Emergency Replacement: When a leader unexpectedly departs, having an interim successor identified prevents operational disruptions.
- Long-Term Leadership Transition: Future leadership development requires annual reviews to assess readiness and address competency gaps.
Both require annual reviews and a discussion of leadership development gaps and how to fill those gaps.
The Succession Planning Process
A well-structured succession plan follows these straightforward steps:
- Identify Critical Roles: Determine critical roles and define the required experience, knowledge, and behavioural competencies required for success.
- Assess Talent: Evaluate internal candidates based on performance and career aspirations. Identifying potential flight risks is also essential. External assessments can provide additional insights.
- Build a Succession Slate: Develop a list of potential successors for each role, noting readiness and development needs.
- Develop Future Successors: Create tailored learning plans that focus on competency and skill development and blind spot identification. External assessments and coaches often support the identification of the required learning and an individual’s development focus.
- Track Progress: Measure development milestones and update plans at least every six months, integrating performance feedback and open dialogue with potential successors
Who owns succession planning?
It’s a shared responsibility!
- Board of Directors: Appoints and manages the CEO while overseeing risk management and leadership development frameworks.
- CEO & Leadership Team: The CEO is ultimately responsible for the alignment of leadership competencies, identification of the talent pipeline, career mapping, performance management, culture, and development plans. They share this responsibility with the leadership team for roles other than the CEO.
- HR Lead: Responsible for the processes, policies, monitoring and reports. The HR lead may also offer learning to enable people leaders to successfully manage the succession within their teams.
The Case for Internal Talent Development
We know from experience that internal candidates for key roles often outperform external hires. Investing in internal leadership development builds engagement, strengthens culture, and ensures smoother transitions during leadership changes.
The Potential Pitfall
Experience has demonstrated that succession planning is not well done when perceptions drive the dialogue rather than facts. We all have perceptions of others and inherent bias in our assumptions. As leaders, we must understand the competencies, skills, experience and career desires of our teams. While performance is important, external assessments are useful in providing a fulsome view of any candidate and can guide their development focus.
Make Succession Planning a Priority
By making succession planning a priority today, organizations can secure a future-ready team that drives long-term success. Is your organization prepared for what’s next?