Planning and structuring changes in leadership is one key way successful businesses differentiate themselves from the herd and outperform their competitors. There are many present and future benefits involved in succession planning, and all of them address inherent business weaknesses, making companies both more productive and more resilient over time.
What Is Succession Planning?
Succession planning is the process of identifying talent within a company and developing it with training and mentoring in order to create replacements for key business positions when leadership changeover occurs.
Too often business owners concentrate all of their time and attention on smaller problems of today. They put out small fires and ignore larger issues that, if left unresolved, seriously threaten the future of their companies. One of these issues is the transfer of leadership.
Change is eventual and unavoidable. It’s the only constant. Your business may have talented leadership currently. It may have had effective leaders and managers in important positions for years or even decades. Unfortunately, those people will not be with your company forever. The purpose of succession planning is to ensure that if a change happens, either suddenly, via an accident, death, or unforeseen event, or gradually, it will still have effective leadership to guide it through a transition and beyond.
Creating an orderly plan for succession makes this possible and offers the following benefits:
Identifies Internal Talent Early – Part of the planning process requires company leadership to determine which positions are most critical for the success of the business. The next step is to identify employees within the company that have demonstrated company values and have the skills and the desire to assume leadership.
In this way any weaknesses are identified and addressed before they become a problem, and employees with talent and potential are encouraged to take on more responsibility and leadership. Motivated workers feel acknowledged and valued which helps improve employee retention and build company loyalty.
Improves Training and Development – Some training is brief and task-specific. Training employees for leadership roles, on the other hand, may take years and include mentoring, shadowing, learning skills, and building relationships.
If there is no one in the company who can take on a specific leadership role, the succession planning process reveals the need for an external search early on while there is still plenty of time for training. In fact, the process should create the structures necessary for both broad and specific training and development within the organization.
Training does not have to be position specific, however. Managing talent within an organization involves nurturing the abilities and skills of any number of employees. Over time, many qualified leaders may emerge able to fill key positions as a result. The more talent a business has, the more “disaster proof” it is.
Maintains Company Continuity – If your company has a specific mission or values or an established company culture that it wants to continue, bringing in outside leadership can be counterproductive. An employee who has been steeping in the company environment over time is much more likely to have absorbed its values and to understand its brand, its employees, and its customers.
Additionally, having current leadership groom a younger generation allows for an easy transfer of the company’s knowledge base to its new leaders. That intellectual capital has been gained over time and would be a huge loss to the company if those people were to die, retire, or leave the company without sharing it with their successors. If your company has people who are irreplaceable, this is not something to brag about – it’s a weakness that must be addressed, and sooner rather than later.
Succession planning is a strategy designed to protect the company and the ownership’s interests. As with any type of planning, it can be daunting. Too many CEOs and owners put it off rather than think about it. But the earlier you begin this process, the more rewards the company will reap, the stronger the company will be, and the more satisfied its most talented employees will be.
If you don’t know where to begin with your company’s succession plan, contact us at Prometis Partners. We have helped many company owners find creative solutions, improve communication, and fix troublesome problems within their companies, and we can help your business too. Don’t leave your company’s future to chance. Call us today.
