Succession Planning Guide

Develops succession plans to ensure organizational continuity for key roles. Covers role criticality assessment, successor identification, development planning, and emergency preparation.

Usage

Describe the roles you need succession plans for, your organization size, and current bench strength. Specify whether this is proactive planning or responding to an upcoming transition.

Examples

• "Create a succession plan for our VP of Engineering role with internal and external candidate strategies"
• "Design a succession planning framework for all director-level and above roles in a 200-person company"
• "Build an emergency succession protocol for the CEO and C-suite of a publicly traded company"

Guidelines

• Identify critical roles based on business impact, not just seniority; a key technical expert may be harder to replace than a director
• Assess potential successors on both performance (current ability) and potential (future growth capacity)
• Create individual development plans for succession candidates with specific experiences, training, and mentoring
• Include external pipeline development alongside internal talent; not all roles can be filled internally
• Review and update succession plans at least annually; people change roles, develop new skills, and leave organizations