Your Guide to a Comprehensive Succession Planning Strategy
Assess Your Starting Point
Effective succession planning starts with understanding your organization's current capabilities and gaps and how those are expected to change in the future. Because every organization faces different challenges and constraints, your path forward will depend on where you're starting. The following questions will help you determine where your organization's starting point is.
Alignment of Talent and Business Strategies
Start by evaluating your existing talent strategy and its alignment with business strategy:
- Does your organization have an integrated talent strategy that connects talent processes across the employee life cycle, particularly performance management and development?
- Does your talent strategy support the business strategy?
- Are assessments used consistently across talent processes?
- How do senior leaders in the organization perceive assessments?
- How well do your talent processes work together to build your leadership pipeline?
- How effectively does your organization identify and develop high potentials outside of succession planning?
Identifying and Developing High Potentials
Next, examine your approach to identifying and developing future leaders:
- What does “potential” mean in your organization?
- What data points are used to evaluate people for potential? Are valid, reliable assessments part of these processes? If not, why?
- How frequently is potential evaluated (and reevaluated)?
- Do you have multiple pools of high-potential talent?
- What percentage of your workforce is identified as high potential?
- What development opportunities are provided to high potentials?
Slating Successors
Next, examine your approach to identifying candidates for specific, known positions:
- How do you identify which roles are most critical for succession planning?
- What is your process for creating succession slates for specific positions?
- Does the organization have success profiles for its critical roles? If not, why?
- How do you classify and determine readiness timelines (ready now, ready in one to two years, ready in three to five years)?
- What backup plans exist if primary successors become unavailable?
- How often are succession slates updated and reviewed?
Pain Points and Urgency
Consider your organization’s pain points in this area:
- Has your organization had any succession failures or near-misses?
- Are recent or looming leadership departures driving urgency?
- Do succession decisions rely on subjective opinions versus data?
- Are you frequently pressed to hire externally for senior roles due to a weak internal bench?
- Are you struggling with lack of diversity in your succession slates?
- Do high potentials leave before you can promote them?
Implementation Readiness
Finally, review your organization’s capacity for change:
- Who will champion and execute the necessary changes?
- What timeline would be realistic for implementing process changes and enhancements?
- To what extent is leadership willing to invest in process improvements for succession?
- What training and development do leaders and HR partners need to implement and properly execute process changes?
- Will competing priorities derail efforts?
Effective succession management depends heavily on your broader talent management capabilities. It's not a standalone process; it's deeply interconnected with your overall talent strategy, talent processes, and business strategy. This means it's integral to business success.