I can think of a number of situations where this statement is factual and not fiction. I am sure that you can think of similar situations as well. I just presented a workshop on Succession Planning and Succession Development and was perhaps surprised that a lot of organizations were not further along in this process. It is actually quite alarming to think of the number that does not have a Succession Plan in place. What is even more interesting is the comments that we have a plan but have not implemented it as of yet. While they may have identified potential successor(s) they have done nothing to develop them to take on the new position should the need arise. They have also not done any forward planning to prepare for situations or disasters where the CEO or any other key resource is no longer with the organization as a result of emergent reasons.

We discussed the basic best practices that we would want to take a look at and I will share those with you. The positive energy that comes from a workshop like this is absolutely awesome where you have the sharing of knowledge and experiences by all participants. If we can channel that energy in the right direction then we can avoid the last minute crisis of not having any successors identified. Let’s take a look at some of those best practices:

• Review of the Strategic Business Plan and its goals and objectives, and Workforce planning strategies
• Identification of positions that will be part of the Succession Planning process
• Review of the job descriptions to ensure they accurately reflect the duties and the competencies
• Identification of the competencies
• Identification of the process for identifying potential successor(s)
• Identification of potential successor(s) – recommend more than one for each position
• Competency assessment of the successor(s) to determine the gap
• Development of a learning and development plan to close the gap
• Development of the time line for closing the gap
• Milestones
• Implementation and execution
• Review and modifications
• Leverage mentoring as part of the development process
  • Knowledge Transfer – Develop a Knowledge Transfer strategy
  • Soft Skills – ongoing process

These are some of the best practice tools that we talked about.  Some key take a ways from this was the need to develop the plan and to implement it. We definitely saw a short coming with having the plan but not actually implementing it and working on the development of potential successors. We all laughed at the analogy of blowing the dust off the plan on an annual basis. We also felt that depending on your organization you may want to review the plan more frequently – every quarter or every six months. That would force accountability. There is one question that you should ask yourself however and that is who owns the succession plan????  While your human resource department would be the logical source – it really does belong to the business. You may find organizations where it is co-owned and if that works for you then great- remember that there has to be some form of accountability.

Your objective from this is to make sure that you do have a plan and that you actually implement it. You need to work with the successor(s) to begin the development process so that you don’t set them up to fail. The quicker that a successor can get up to speed in their new role the sooner they are productive and increasing profitability in the organization. It is time to get planning – after all, “can you afford not to?”