Succession Planning: More Important Than Ever Before

What would happen to your organization if a key individual suddenly wasn’t there? Worse, what if your current leadership team decided one-by-one that it was time to leave your organization, all within a few years of one another? It's tough to think about, but every company has to have a plan in place for what could come next.

Succession planning is a systematic approach to ensuring that an organization has a steady, reliable pipeline of talent to meet its future needs in leadership and other essential roles. Too long of a gap between one leader leaving and the next one taking their place can take a long time to recover from.

Six benefits of succession planning

Companies that use succession planning achieve many benefits. They include:

1. Improved retention of talented employees: Some might not want it, but others thrive in an environment where, if they work hard, they might be in line for a promotion.
2. Faster decisions filling key positions: Part of a succession plan is knowing what it takes for someone to succeed in that position. When you know what you're looking for, less time is spent crafting a job posting or deliberating expectations.
3. Eliminating the need for external searches that are costly for key positions: A lengthy interview process to find the right person for a leadership role takes time and money. 
4. Active development of longer-term successors: Through encouraging career progress and skill development, an employee is more likely to succeed when promoted to a leadership role.
5. Fostering a positive corporate culture: People want to work for a company where there's opportunities and room to grow within.
6. Encourages outside talent to seek employment with your company: Word spreads fast. If others see the positivity in your culture, they'll want to work for you.

There are many ways that succession plans can unfold within an organization. It's critical, however, that the planning be based on company vision, mission, and goals. These goals need to drive the skills and attitudes that are identified as imperative for those in key leadership positions. All employees should be aware that such a process exists and of how it works. Those covered by the process should have an opportunity to have input about their own career aspirations and preferences.

Mentoring programs

Mentoring refers to a developmental relationship between a more experienced leader and a less experienced protégé. A mentoring relationship can be informal, where a teaching relationship develops naturally, or formal, where a leader is assigned to a specific employee, often associated with organizational mentoring programs designed to promote development.

Well-designed formal mentoring programs include:

• Program goals
• Schedules
• Training (for mentors and mentees)
• Evaluation
• Open access

Identifying potential successors is challenging. It can be helpful to include pieces at various points: performance reviews, mentoring programs, skill development tracking, and reward programs and other incentive programs. Succession planning is a two-way street: The company needs to identify what it wants and needs, and individuals need to identify what they want and need. Succession planning involves orchestrating these two parallel paths and merging them into a meaningful connection.

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