Who’s Going to Follow Your Leaders (After They’ve Moved On)?

Succession Planning and Strategic Talent Management can help you avoid catastrophic risks and be more competitive now and in the years ahead

By Florian Kete

Mention the word “succession planning” in a small to medium-sized company these days, and you can see the eyes roll. Most leaders these days are worried about top line revenue, and how they’re going make the most productive use of the staff they have and may not want to be distracted by planning for potential vacancies or departures.

What many fail to understand is that there’s a correlation between managing your top talent effectively, overcoming the challenges of the economic downturn, and taking your business to the next level. The “rolling eyes” is precisely the reason someone needs to take it seriously—if your leaders don’t consider it a priority, you can guarantee that no-one else will.

Knowing what to do in case your CEO or one of your key players is hit by a bus is not the only reason to go through succession planning. There are other reasons- but mainly: “It will position your company to be stronger both now and in the years ahead.”

Succession planning is an integral part of strategic planning, Actually it’s somewhat of a misnomer because it’s really an exercise in “Strategic Talent Management.” As Jim Collins detailed in his acclaimed book “Good to Great”, step one to being a great company begins by having the right people on the bus! Unfortunately what works for mammoth organizations like GE and IBM; the firms that have pioneered succession planning—does not necessarily work for smaller organizations.

Succession Planning /Strategic Talent Management for the Small to Medium-sized Business

As you embark on your own Succession Planning Project /Strategic Talent Management Project, be sure to adapt it to the nuances of your business. Take a look at your talent needs over the next 3-5 years and decide how you’re going to fill those needs.

THE TOP FIVE SUCCESSION PLANNING/STRATEGIC TALENT MANAGEMENT QUESTIONS:

These five questions will help you get started on a simplified succession planning and strategic talent management process:

 1. How will you compete in the years ahead? Which positions will be critical to leading the company? Restrict your focus to only positions that are critical to the on-going success of your organization. Don’t get sucked into the argument that “every job at our company is critical”!

2. What talent will get you there? If one of those critical positions becomes vacant, how will you fill it? Increasing responsibilities to someone else’s role usually isn’t a good answer. Maybe you already have people with multiple skill sets AND the desire to do whatever is needed who can fill these roles? If not, you need to know who performs these roles at other organizations that you might want to recruit. What talents that you don’t have will you need to add to your organization in order to compete in the future? Where will you need to be talent-wise to lead the pack or at least to keep up with the pack?

3. What key things you should be working on? If you don’t have an obvious successor and don’t want to steal talent from someone else, are you willing to work on developing an internal talent for a possible role? If so, what are the one or two critical issues that your identified people need to work on during the current year? Are you ready to hold them accountable for developing those key skills? What talent risks do you have right now? Are there key people in critical positions that might leave you? If so, what are you prepared to do RIGHT NOW to prevent them from leaving? Which current employee could be re-assigned to that role successfully?

4. What will you do NOW to develop emerging talent? When is the last time a development conversation took place with talented young people you hope to keep for the future? Has anyone been specific with them about what they need to do to advance their careers? Do they know that they are being tracked for succession purposes? Don’t surprise your young talent that they were being tracked for bigger jobs as you conduct their exit interview!

5. What would you do if you lost a top leader? It might not be a truck that makes you lose a top manager. People have been known to make some crazy career choices after a recession. Can you contemplate life without your top operations person? Or your top financial person?

Succession planning and Strategic Talent Management helps you avoid catastrophic risk, and ensures the availability of experienced and capable employees that are prepared to assume critical roles as they become available.

This process positions your company to be much stronger both today and in the years ahead. In this context you can see how much you have to gain if you do manage your talent with an eye towards the future—and how much you stand to lose if you don’t.

Florian Kete is the Vice President of Human Resources at Excel Polymers. With a background in consulting, business start ups, venture capital organizations and large multi-national corporations (GE, FedEx), he brings a strong, no nonsense business approach to the business of talent management and people development. He is a member of The Senior HR Leader Thought Forum.