What is succession planning?
Any type of succession planning process can often be a daunting task. Whether it be for family succession, business owner succession or just key leader succession. In most cases, if you aren't planning for succession then you are planning to fail. No business wants to end up with crucial seats empty!
Succession planning is an intricate and critical strategy for businesses and organisations to ensure future stability and continued success. Good succession planning can help protect your organisation against the risks of turnover, ensuring that it has access to the right talent, with the right skills at the right time.
It also helps organisations fully comprehend what the critical roles are and how they are backfilled, or in most cases not...
Here's an overview of six steps that we have seen our clients use to deliver winning succession plans:
1. Assess your growth plans
The most successful succession plans are tailored to each business's vision and strategy. The first step in creating a plan is assessing the current situation compared to the future growth potential. This often will involve the Board of Directors, owners or key senior leaders. By doing this gaps will become more apparent which will help in building out the plan to address them.
2. Create goals and objectives for succession planning
Once you have identified where your company wants to go e.g the vision, you need to create meaningful goals for your succession plan. Such goals should include the number of individuals that you want to be ready for a leadership position within a designated amount of time, as well as how much training will be provided to them during this period. It is good to look at which internal employees are suited versus who needs to come from a wider talent pool.
3. Identify potential leaders
After defining your goals, identify key employees who possess the appropriate qualities needed in order to achieve success in their role (for example, good decision-making abilities, creative problem solving skills and an understanding of strategic thinking). Holding interviews with managers and supervisors can help identify key candidates who have demonstrated successful performance in their current roles. We suggest using a talent matrix as an exercise for key roles
4. Create developmental opportunities
Once you've identified your potential leaders create developmental opportunities such as job rotations or special assignments with honed skill sets which will give these contenders valuable experience they need in order to prepare them for higher-level roles within your business. Often these could involve business planning tasks or initiatives that are aligned with the business strategy.
5. Establish timelines & benchmarks
You should set realistic timelines that coincide with both short-term and long-term plans, giving full attention to forecasting the timeline and key milestones for meeting expectations along the way. This will help everyone understand what resources are needed from the start until the completion date in having successful successors ready when needed- not screaming for them when it’s too late.
6. Monitor progress and adjust when necessary
As future positions become available make sure you continually monitor progress regularly throughout the journey, providing feedback accordingly. It’s important to document any feedback – log notes describing those involved with the development and key outcomes- this provides insights into allies vs roadblocks when transitioning new leaders into key positions.
The 6 steps above do remain in the ‘generic’ realm, I agree. However, they are there to help start the conversation and to kickstart a process that has to be owned by motivated and discipled leaders.
So, the question that remains is where and how do you start? Well, the trick is…..well there is no trick, you just just have to start!
This article was contributed by Luke Johnson, Strategic Advisor.