Your Guide to a Comprehensive Succession Planning Strategy
Monitor Progress with Clear Metrics
These core metrics can be used (with care) to assess the health and effectiveness of the succession planning process:
- Strength of slates for critical roles, including emergency interim fills when no successor is immediately ready
- Diversity of succession slate
- Internal fill rate using identified successors
- Successor readiness progress over time
- Personality data among successors
- Performance data among successors
- Geographic mobility among successors
To monitor leadership development over time, give your top successors growth assignments and track their performance. When selecting these assignments, strategically balance the demands of the future position with the characteristics of the potential successor. For example, a potential CFO successor might excel at financial analysis and industry knowledge but need experience with external stakeholders. In this case, an opportunity to lead investor relations initiatives would provide targeted practice in communicating complex financial strategies while building essential business relationship skills. An executive coach can support your successors through development experiences like this so your organization can optimize its resources.
The following case demonstrates how assessment-based coaching helped a successor candidate develop the specific skills needed to earn the support of her organization's board—and ultimately the CEO role.
Succession Spotlight: Maria
Maria served as the chief marketing officer of a division within a top US engineering company. The organization’s integrated talent management approach meant Maria’s potential was spotted early. The executive team identified her as a future leader whose successful marketing campaigns and high employee engagement scores made her a qualified succession candidate.
However, despite Maria's track record of success and business acumen, the company's board members did not view Maria as a strong potential successor. The board was composed primarily of older engineering experts, while Maria was a younger executive with a creative background. The cultural and generational differences revealed specific gaps in Maria's skills: executive presence and strategic communication.
The company provided Maria with a six-month assessment-based coaching protocol using the Hogan assessments as a foundation for development. She learned that versatility in leadership style was crucial for senior roles and practiced adapting her communication for different stakeholder groups. By the end of Maria's development initiative, all the board members had become strong advocates for her advancement.
Shortly thereafter, the manufacturing company was acquired by a global manufacturing corporation. Maria was named as the new CMO, the first of two roles identified for her as critical experiences. Her continued leadership effectiveness led to her further promotion to COO and ultimately to CEO. Maria's journey from marketing executive to CEO demonstrates the power of a well-executed succession strategy that integrates assessment with high-potential identification, critical experience identification, and leadership development.