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Six Steps of Effective Succession Planning

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Succession is going to happen in your organization whether you plan for it or not. People take other positions, retire, or quit. Unexpected turnover can generate significant capacity shortfalls, lost knowledge, and talent misalignments that disrupt or derail organizations. The organizations that execute effective succession plans fare much better than those that don’t. It is the responsibility of senior leaders, with the support of human resource professionals, to create and execute succession plans.

In my three decades of leadership, I’ve seen succession planning done well, and I’ve seen it done horribly. The organizations that do it well generally follow six steps:

First, identify the organization’s key positions that would have significant negative impacts if not filled by well-qualified individuals. While C-Suite positions should have a succession plan, most organizations benefit from developing succession plans for more junior leadership and highly technical positions. It can take years to develop people capable of filling positions requiring high degrees of competence in multiple disciplines. When looking at the positions in your organization, think about how difficult it would be to replace a given person or fill a position to develop a rough priority order to begin your planning.

Second, map the projected competency requirements for the highest priority and hardest-to-fill positions. What specifically is needed to be successful? If “John” is going to be tough to replace, what is it about his skills and expertise that makes it so? As you develop your list, be sure to account for the people skills in addition to the technical skills. Too long of a list can become unmanageable, so do your best to keep the list to just the most critical items. Do not make one of the most common mistakes by assuming your best “doers” should automatically become your supervisors or leaders. While not mutually exclusive, technical skills and people skills are not the same thing. Not all doers have an interest in or are capable of being great leaders, just as not all great professional athletes make great coaches.

Third, identify a pool of internal candidates that most closely align with the competency requirements of the key positions. These candidates should be matched against the requirements of the position, which requires assessing candidate competencies. While it would be understandable to say, “Well, this person has experience in this area, so they must be competent,” this is an incorrect assumption. Just because people have experience performing a job doesn’t mean that they were good at it or maintained their proficiency. I suggest going to your subject matter experts to get a list of the criteria they would use to assess competencies and give those criteria to supervisors to help get a better understanding of who is capable of doing what. You will likely find that you have a shortage of qualified talent in some of your pools, which will necessitate a focused development plan, external hiring, or possibly outsourcing.

Fourth, your human resources team should create a developmental framework to address common, recurring, and important competency shortfalls. If done properly, there should be a mix of training, education, and experiential opportunities tailored to the competency requirements. Leaders should send people for these opportunities to develop specific competencies that they will use. Using developmental opportunities as a reward wastes resources and frustrates those in the organization who need those opportunities to do their jobs. Additionally, people who have developed additional competencies they cannot use become disenfranchised and tend to leave for opportunities that allow them to use their newly acquired skills. Similarly, organizations that don’t invest in developing their people have lower levels of engagement and productivity.  People feel valued when the organization and their leadership invest in them. Senior and developing leaders, in particular, benefit from coaching. Furthermore, people at all levels can benefit from a mentoring program. Whenever possible, the organization should work with its members to ensure their development and career progression align individual desires with organizational needs.

Fifth, after you build your succession plan, do your best to break it. Develop realistic and challenging “what if” scenarios that could threaten your succession plan. In accordance with the likelihood and severity of the scenario’s risk, develop contingency plans. While it may be tempting to discount risks because they seem daunting, it is better to be prepared than not. Few, if any, plans execute exactly like they were drafted, but the insights from the planning process often prove invaluable. During the process, you likely will discover some blind spots or things you don’t know but think you should. Your team can now work to pull together that information for you, so you have a more complete picture of your team and the threats to them. Armed with more information, you can develop risk mitigation strategies. Do you have high-potential and high-impact people you’re afraid could leave? Show them you are vested in their future and success by getting them a coach who can provide development tailored to them.

Sixth and lastly, implement, assess, and make adjustments at least annually. No matter how good the plan is, things happen, and you miss things—it’s unavoidable. A key piece of your plan is to think about how you will assess the effectiveness of your succession planning efforts. For example, you sent “Beth” for a developmental opportunity. How did that work out? Did you see an improvement in performance, did it stay the same, or did Beth leave the organization? If people have left the organization, why did they leave? Were you prepared with a qualified candidate pool? Did the newly hired or promoted individual perform as expected? As you work through these questions and others, think about how you can objectively and consistently measure your performance and progress. Constantly changing assessment criteria makes it impossible to assess progress. Hanging on to useless assessment criteria means you won’t understand what’s happening now. Similarly, changing too many pieces of your succession plan too often makes it very difficult to determine what is helping and what is hurting. Strike a balance by thoughtfully and intentionally making adjustments. Regardless, when there is a change in a key position, debrief with the team to continually improve.

You may have gathered that organizational health in growth and transition doesn’t just happen. The most successful leaders recognize the importance of succession planning and give it at least the same attention as other aspects of their mission. Don’t leave the future of your organization to chance. If you have an old succession plan, dust it off and see if it’s working for you. If you don’t have a plan, there’s no time like today to start. It’s time to accelerate your leadership!

Authored by:  Jason Lamb, Managing Director

Jason Lamb

Jason is the United States Space Force's Talent Strategist. In this role, he is actively involved in crafting and executing the United States Space Force’s human capital strategy and plans. A nationally recognized thought leader in leadership and talent management, he advises Space Force senior leadership on how best to acquire, develop, engage, assess, promote, and employ its military and civilian members. Prior to his current position, Jason served over 25 years in the Air Force as an intelligence officer and retired in the rank of Colonel.

In uniform, Jason served with distinction in a variety of intelligence, staff, and command assignments in deployed combat environments, geographically dispersed organizations across the globe, and in the United States. As an intelligence group commander, he led over 650 personnel in eight units spread across four continents supporting everything from national decision making to time-sensitive tactical operations.  Jason has deployed in support of Operations SOUTHERN WATCH, IRAQI FREEDOM, and ENDURING FREEDOM. During his career, Jason was recognized as the Air Force’s Intelligence Officer of the Year, graduated number one from his Air War College class, was awarded the Bronze Star in Afghanistan, and twice awarded the prestigious Legion of Merit.

While those accomplishments are noteworthy, he is perhaps best known for leading a significant culture shift in the Air Force and across the Department of Defense beginning with a series of articles he published under the pseudonym “Col Ned Stark.”  In those articles, Jason highlighted significant organizational culture and leadership alignment issues, provided root cause analysis, and offered innovative solutions resulting in the Chief of Staff of the Air Force offering him a senior position on his staff.  To the surprise of many, Jason chose to end his fast-track career and retire instead so that he could coach and engage with broader audiences.  The Space Force reached out to Jason to architect an innovative new approach toward talent management and leadership development that would ensure the long-term alignment of the newest armed service’s mission and values.  The result was The Guardian Ideal, described by the Chief of Space Operations as the single most important accomplishment of the Space Force to date.

Jason understands how to create and develop high-performing teams of teams.  He knows how to uncover organizational misalignment and dysfunction to craft tailored solutions that improve workforce retention and performance.  Jason is a proven leader and solver of wicked and complex problems.

Jason graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a degree in International Relations with a minor in Japanese.  He holds four advanced degrees in organizational management, national security policy, and strategy.  Additionally, Jason is an International Coaching Federation-certified professional coach with an additional certification as an Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner.  He resides in Colorado with his wife and daughter.

Victory Strategies is a Veteran Owned Business.