Compass Points: Outline

Outline for Succession Planning

Define where you currently are in your succession planning process.

What positions are you planning for?
What key people have you designated for succeeding to higher positions?
Where are they in their experience, education and training schedules?
What has changed since your last review?
What other candidates can you identify, either for future needs or to replace people who were in the process and either left your company or did not work out as expected?

What has changed inside your company which might alter where you have been planning to go with your succession plan?

How have the current candidates performed to date?
What jobs have changed, and how have they changed, since your last review?
What new opportunities, technologies and other issues have emerged which may lead to change in the succession plan, its objectives or tactics?

Define where you want your succession plan to take you, especially in light of your current strategic plan.

What will you look like in three to five years and what will your key people be doing then?
What openings will you need to fill due to attrition, promotion or expansion?
What new disciplines will the company require, and how will you fill them?
How does your succession plan fit with your expectation of where your company, your markets and your internal situation will likely be going?

Define how you will get from where you are today to what you want the company to look like at the end of your current planning horizon.

Who will be involved and what will each be doing?
When will they start and end each part of the process and how will you judge their progress?
What criteria will be used to determine each candidate’s ongoing fitness for his or her career path?
Does each candidate offer and demonstrate continuing potential and progress toward meeting the requirements you have established?
On what basis will you determine if someone is not progressing appropriately, and what can you do to help that person develop to the fullest extent?
What alternatives can you offer those who are not meeting expectations?

Once a plan is in place and people are in the process of being groomed for higher responsibilities and positions, where do you go from here? As indicated above, this is an ongoing process. You establish goals, select candidates, establish training and educational processes, initiate the process of selecting and training with each individual, and monitor developments. As the Simplified Strategic Planning process teaches, you continually update your status, review your assumptions about where you want to go and how you will get there, modify your strategies and the resulting actions/action plans, and continually feed back environmental developments. As your situation changes, you alter your objectives to match the appropriate strategies, make mid-course corrections, and continue your ongoing management processes as a part of the regular course of business.

At each planning interval (usually annually), you will go through the entire process just as you go through your Strategic Planning process. You ask the same types of questions, make the same types of analyses as enunciated above, make whatever changes and modifications are indicated by the circumstances, update your goals and procedures, and proceed with the ongoing processes. Where you need additional talent, you perform appropriate searches, both inside and outside the company. You are basically limited by your resources, both human and capital, and your needs, and how far your “headlights” allow you to see into the future. Will you be totally correct? No, it is not likely you will get it totally right. But, you will get better as you do this process on a regular basis, and you will get better with time and repetition. You have the on-going advantage of being able to make mid-course corrections, so you shouldn’t go too far wrong.

Back to Featured Article