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Authored by Dion Mills, Head of Executive Recruitment
Succession planning is easy to put at the bottom of your priority list, until suddenly it becomes urgent.
A question worth asking at board level is:
"If your CEO resigned tomorrow, what would happen next?"
For many organisations, the answer reveals the difference between having a contingency plan and having a genuine succession plan.
A contingency plan helps manage an immediate gap. Succession planning is about something broader: ensuring the organisation has the leadership capability, talent and resilience it needs to continue to thrive over the longer term.
Too often, succession planning only moves up the agenda when a resignation lands on the table. But the organisations that seem to navigate leadership transitions most effectively are usually thinking about it long before they need to.
They're having ongoing conversations about questions such as:
• Who might be ready for greater responsibility in the future?
• What development opportunities would help them get there?
• How are we building leadership capacity across the organisation?
• What would a transition look like if a key leader moved on?
Leadership change is inevitable. People retire, pursue new opportunities, relocate or simply decide it's time for a different challenge. No organisation can predict exactly when those changes will happen, but it can decide how to respond.
Successful transitions aren't always the result of having a perfect emergency plan. More often, they’re underpinned by organisations that have consistently invested in their people, developed internal leadership capability and maintained a clear understanding of the talent they have around them.
That's what succession planning is really about. Not identifying a single replacement for a specific role but creating the conditions for leadership talent to develop.
It also means looking beyond individual roles and considering the organisation as a whole. What leadership capabilities will be needed in three, five or ten years? How might the organisation's strategy, structure and operating environment change? And where does the current leadership pipeline need to evolve to meet those demands?
Is it something discussed when change is on the horizon, or an ongoing part of strategic thinking?
Succession planning is just one part of building a strong and sustainable leadership team. At Edwin People, we support organisations with succession planning, executive recruitment, leadership development and executive pay, helping them prepare for both today's challenges and tomorrow's leadership needs.