Leadership Succession Planning: Protect Your Company’s Future

Published on: 14th August 2024, Updated on: 9th October 2024

Written By:

Darren has been working in the world of soft skills training and coaching for over 20 years. He began his career as a buyer at big 4 UK supermarket and after 13 years he decided to leave to set-up Making Business Matter (MBM) because he wanted to help people to be the very best version of themselves. Connect with Darren on Linkedin and his Google Profile.

The Problem With Leadership Succession Planning is There’s No Reward and It’s a Long Term Problem

Leadership succession planning is crucial for safeguarding companies against severe disruptions. Unfortunately, it often gets disregarded. For instance, Steve Ballmer was the CEO of Microsoft (MS) from 2000 to 2014. The world changed immeasurably during his time, and many believed he should have been replaced years earlier. MS, the world’s third most profitable company, at the time, had no succession plan. Yes, Microsoft didn’t do it. Yet we, mere mortals, are supposed to impose this complex and foggy initiative in our business. ‘Nah, not a chance. Oh, we get it. We get why, but no. I’m busy’.

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The Crucial Yet Overlooked Art of Leadership Succession Planning: Why We Keep Missing the Mark

I could try to convince you as the Greeks did, with logic – A detailed study by Deloitte found that “while 86 percent of leaders believe leadership succession planning is an urgent or important priority, only 14 percent believe they do it well.” Similarly, according to Harvard Business Review – “Many large companies fail to pay enough attention to their succession practices, which leads to excessive turnover at the top, destroying a significant amount of value – close to $1 trillion a year.”

Unfortunately, I know that intellectually you get it. So, why don’t we do leadership succession planning? ‘I’m busy’. Yeah, I know that, but that’s the Get Out of Jail Card we use for every and any scenario of things we don’t want to do. The problem is that there’s no reward for leaders who do succession planning since they’re likely to be gone when it happens, and also it’s tomorrow’s problem that never needs to be dealt with when so many other issues are here & now.

From Will to Way

female leader pulling coworker up the ladder for leadership succession planning — It’s important to identify the critical point for your leadership succession planning

Are we unmotivated to do leadership succession planning, or do we lack the knowledge to implement it? I suspect that knowing how (way), could help with the why (will). Google searches of ‘How to Succession Plan’ leave us with a task that feels like an entire company would need to stop what it’s doing just to succession plan. That, of course, can’t happen.

So, let’s make it darn simple with laser-like focus beginning with one question – ‘Which member of your team, if they left, would leave you most in the sh1t?’. Each line manager will be able to answer that question. Keep in mind that the person from your team that is the identified leadership succession planning critical point, might be so because either they are:

The most experienced.
The most influential across the company.
The most knowledgeable on the company’s products/services.
The longest serving member.
They know how to use the xyz software and no one else does.

Then, each line manager asks themselves the second question of two questions, ‘What are you going to do about it?’. HR manages the spreadsheet, line managers populate it, and so it begins. Circulating the file just before appraisal time would be good. There you go, a simple step to begin leadership succession planning. For more, check out our succession planning template.