Succession Planning Guide
Your Complete Guide to the Succession Planning Process
Download Your Comprehensive Succession Planning Guide
Succession planning is an essential strategic process that ensures operational continuity during transitions in leadership. SIGMA’s Succession Planning Guide simplifies this process and outlines the requirements for each stage.
What You Get
An outline of SIGMA’s six-step succession planning process.
Links to our top succession planning templates, with instructions on how to use them.
SIGMA’s “Are you ready for succession planning?” checklist.
A step-by-step overview of SIGMA’s succession planning solutions.
Your Guide to Succession in 6 Simple Steps
SIGMA’s Succession Planning Guide includes our most important templates in chronological order, as well as instructions and examples to guide you through our six-step succession planning process.
What’s Inside?
Why Plan for Succession?
SIGMA has worked with thousands of organizations across North America, and what CEOs consistently tell us is that they don’t plan for tomorrow because they can hardly keep up with the demands of today. While planning for succession certainly requires an investment of time and effort, it is well worth the cost. Harvard Business Review (HBR), estimates that better succession planning alone could help increase annual company valuations and investor returns by 20-25%.1 Not only that, succession plans build internal leadership pipelines that help:
- Attract and retain top talent.
- Improve performance and productivity.
- Increase employee morale.
- Facilitate smooth leadership transitions.
- Create strategic alignment.
- Ensure long-term organizational stability.
To help you get started, SIGMA’s consultants have developed a practical succession planning guide that leads you through each stage of our succession planning process and provides practical tips and tools along the way.
MORE RESOURCES
CASE STUDY: Save 200+ Hours by Working with SIGMA
This case study follows Sandy, the vice president of human resources at a mid-sized tech company, who is tasked with creating a formal succession planning process. She weighs three options: building an entirely new succession plan on her own, using existing tools and templates, or hiring succession planning experts. After reviewing the pros and cons of each approach and considering her available time and resources, one option distinctly stands out for its clear long-term efficiency and effectiveness above the others.
1 Harrell, E. (December 2016). Succession Planning: What the Research Says. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/12/succession-planning-what-the-research-says.