How to Build a Comprehensive Succession Plan (Sep 2024)

Helen: All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to SIGMA’s September Succession Planning webinar. We are going to get started. My name is Helen Schroeder. I am the marketing coordinator at SIGMA, and I will be your co-pilot for today. So, if you have any questions, feel free to post those in the Q&A bar at the bottom and I’ll be on hand to help out with any tech support or other issues that we encounter. Also with me today is my colleague, Dr. Arieana Thompson, and she will be presenting the webinar content.

Before we get into some housekeeping for the session though, I just wanted to introduce you to SIGMA in case any of you are not familiar with our organization. We are a professional services firm that offers talent development, succession planning, and psychological assessments for companies that are looking to build their internal talent pools. SIGMA has been in business for over 50 years, so together we have a lot of experience and we’re excited to be bringing that to you today on the topic of “Succession Planning.”

So, we’ve got about 60 minutes together. For the first 45 minutes or so, Arieana will walk you through our webinar content to introduce you to what succession planning is, why it matters, and give you some handy tips and tools to build your own succession plans as well.

We will be recording the session, so no need to take notes. We’ll share both the recording and a copy of the slides afterwards. And we will be saving about 15 minutes at the end to go through some Q&A questions. So, if you have questions, feel free to post those. I’ll be moderating those questions. And if there’s anything that we don’t get to during our session today, you’re also welcome to follow up with us via email. But for now, don’t be shy, use the Q&A, that’s what it’s there for, and we hope that you get a lot of educational and also practical content out of this session.

And now without any further ado, I will introduce you to Arieana and we will get the show on the road. So, Dr. Arieana Thompson is a senior leadership consultant. She believes in positively transforming the modern-day workplace through thought-provoking evidence-based insights. Arieana is a subject matter expert in executive leadership, succession management, wellness cultures, and employee growth. And in her work at SIGMA, she supports the executive teams with succession planning and leadership development and assessment. So, we are in great hands. Thank you for being here today, Arieana, and I’ll pass it off to you to get started.

Dr. Thompson: Thanks so much, Helen. Welcome, everyone, to our webinar, “How to Build a Comprehensive Succession Plan.” And I’ll just note that we have been running this webinar this year every other month, so we have one left. So, if you like this session and would like to send a colleague or anybody else, we’ll be having our last one of the year in two months. So, thank you so much for joining, and let’s dive in.

Webinar Agenda

I just want to give you an overview of the webinar agenda for today. We’ll be beginning by discussing the basics. What is succession planning, and how does it differ from replacement hiring? And also, why is it important in an organizational context, and why it should be invested in? Then we’ll talk about our SIGMA process. Based on literature review, lots of research, and client experiences, we’ve developed SIGMA’s six-step succession process, which I look forward to showing you and walking you through today. And then we’ll begin to wrap up with some tips, such as talking about common succession pitfalls, the greatest hurdle to succession, which is implementation, and what it’s like working with consultants.

What is Succession Planning?

So, what is succession planning? Succession planning is the process of identifying and developing talent to fill critical roles when vacancies occur. So, this is a long and comprehensive definition, but some key parts include identifying and developing talent and making sure people are ready to take over critical roles in the case that people leave the organization.

Core Features of Succession Plans

So robust succession plans share a few core features. First, they’re goal-oriented. There’s a clear vision for the succession plan and understanding of what the succession plan aims to accomplish and how. It’s also ongoing over time. It’s not a one-and-done type of plan where you get together, do strategic planning, and now everything is done. You really have to invest in your succession plan over time, making sure you’re coming back to it, updating it, and also engaging in the elements that are necessary for successful succession planning, including that development of talent.

And a succession plan also must be flexible to changing needs, circumstances, or priorities. So, a succession plan is really looking at not only the role and what is needed for success in a role but who is available within the organization. Who might you put on your succession bench? And this means that we need to continually update our plans as people leave or join the organization. So, it’s something that we should always have in the back of our mind and update over time.

And therefore, a good succession plan will build a pool of qualified candidates for each critical role, as you know what will be critical for each role and the competencies needed, and then you can begin to develop them to make sure that they’re ready in the instance that someone leaves and there’s a new vacancy. And consequently, it provides opportunities for employee growth and development. And we know that this is a big attractor and reason for turnover in an organization.

How Succession Planning Drives Growth & Continuity

So, the modern-day workplace really believes in upskilling. They want to have career growth. They want to feel like they are developing their personal and professional skills.
So the succession plan requires this as well. So, it’s really a win-win both for the organization and people within the organization.

And therefore, it increases the confidence in the company’s ability to fill vacant roles because you have been pre-emptively preparing both your leaders, your organization, and your people for this eventual change in transition.

So collectively, succession plans are important because they provide your company with a roadmap for continuity for when changes occur. And we know that people are leaving their jobs within an average of about two years nowadays. So even if that’s not the case for your organization, it is highly likely that you will see turnover. People might retire. There are different reasons why we see flux in our talent in our organization. And being ready for this is really the purpose of succession.

But then it even goes further and touches on things like vision and legacy as you are not only being short-sighted, but you’re thinking about the long-term, what your organization stands for, and who’s going to be the right person to continue that legacy.

So we’re going to open it up for some engagement today. There’s a QR code that you can scan with your phone if you’d like, or if you prefer to join on your computer, you can join us for participating in the polls throughout the session. You can go to menti.com, so that’s menti.com, and use the code 77467764.

So, I’m going to give everybody about two minutes to get settled in, have the opportunity to log into this poll, and I would love to hear your response to our first question of the day. Does your company have a succession plan? The options are yes, we have a formal succession plan and process that is used across the organization.

Next is, most of our teams are engaging in succession planning but there’s no standardized process, we have a few replacements in mind for people who may be leaving soon, we haven’t thought about succession at all, or not sure. So go ahead and answer that first poll of the session. Again, feel free to scan the QR code if that’s easiest for you.

And in another 60 seconds…and we will be using polls throughout the session.

All right. So interestingly, we see that one-third of our audience today says most of our teams are engaging in succession planning but there is no standardized process. So that’s interesting to see. And then another two-thirds say we have a few replacements in mind for people who may be leaving soon, indicating that you’re thinking about it but maybe there’s no formalized process for that portion of the audience either.

Succession Planning vs. Replacement Hiring

All right. So now we’re going to talk about what is the difference between succession planning and replacement hiring.

Replacement Hiring

Well, replacement hiring is the typical method of hiring that is done by typically an HR function, where the timing is really reactive in the organization. You are having someone leave, and then you start the hiring process. And therefore, the selection approach typically chooses the best person available at that given time. And it’s usually trying to replicate someone who has just left, trying to replace that person exactly in order to just get the job filled and continue operations.

The information often uses only information from the supervisor as they are trying to fill that role. And if they’re lucky, they also have some information from the incumbent if that person has not already left.

And the succession bench is just one, as you need to fill it immediately, and you’ll consider one person and then fill it. And it reduces the objectivity as it’s somewhat based on being at the right place at the right time. And the process is hiring done as needed.

Succession Planning

So, to contrast that with succession planning, succession planning is much more proactive. You’re trying to prepare the best candidate for the role for the future. And therefore, you’re able to choose the best candidate, even if they’re different from the incumbent. You can be more strategic and think about what the role is going to require now and into the future, and how that might be different from the past.

The information leverages feedback from multiple sources. For example, in our succession practice, we ask for information from the person in the role, people who work at the same level as that role, and when possible, even feedback from the supervisor as well to really get that rounded out 360 view of the role itself.

And the succession bench can be as deep as the organization would want it. So, you can create a bench of succession candidates for each role. In practice, we see this being typically between two to five people being considered for each role in the average organization. And therefore, this enhances objectivity as selection and promotion occur more objectively and based on merits and competencies. And the process becomes hiring being integrated with recruitment, development, and even diversity initiatives. So again, it’s about creating options, it’s about development, and it’s about objectivity.

So, we have our next poll of the session. Succession planning or replacement hiring. What does your team do? I’d love to hear from you. Again, you’ll just use that same link. You can join at menti.com using the code 77467764. Starting to get our responses in. Thank you. Give it about another 30 seconds. Would love to hear from everyone here today. All right. Oh, thank you so much. Getting more participation here.

So, what I’m seeing now, a third replacement hiring. So, taking that more traditional hiring approach. And then another two-thirds are doing a mix of succession planning and replacement hiring. So, thank you so much for your engagement. It’s great to hear from you.

Why Succession Planning Matters

So why succession planning matters. Again, turnover is really inevitable in all organizations. Succession planning can help you prepare in advance for vacancies and make sure that you’re ready to have that organizational continuity and you’re not stopping operations as someone leaves the organization.

And succession planning can also help organizations to retain organization-specific knowledge, otherwise known as institutional knowledge. And this is actually one of the biggest factors why some people may come and engage with succession planning for us. Sometimes they’re being proactive, and they can see that they have an aging-out leadership team at the senior level, and they think it’s really important that this information gets transferred to the next generation. And they know if they’re not proactive in their planning that this may not happen.

In addition, it can motivate employees to engage in succession planning and create that culture of growth and development if you’re really taking the time to understand what’s needed in a role and then develop people who might eventually take over that role, which then, in turn, can help you attract and retain staff long-term as they feel like you are investing in them, you see an upward journey for them, and they feel cared for by the organization.

But also, it can improve objective decision-making as we are taking a broader lens of who might be a good leader or a good person to even move into middle management or other critical positions. And you’re really selecting the best talent that you have available to you. And further, you’re preparing them for the next role through your development efforts.

SIGMA’s 6-Step Succession Planning Process

So now we’re going to jump into the six steps of SIGMA’s succession planning process. Right here, I’ll talk about the six steps at a high level, and then I’m going to go into detail about each step.

You can see we also will have a number of free resources available on sigmaassessmentsystems.com if you want to look more into our free succession resources. And those are in the yellow font on the right-hand side.

So, the first step is to identify critical roles in the organization, knowing who is most critical and who you need to plan for. Next is building success profiles. So, you want to understand the competencies and core role needs of each critical role and to understand what is required to have success as a candidate in that position.

Once you know what’s needed in the role, you can begin to nominate successors and select candidates to be on your succession bench. From there, you’ll begin to assess development needs, understanding the profile of each candidate and their personalized development areas. Then from this assessment, you’ll have the information needed to begin developing talent and actually engaging in those development activities and making development plans.

And then lastly, we believe it’s very important to measure progress. So, get some indicators that you think will be associated with your succession plan, measure them so you can show growth and ROI over time.

Step 1: Identify Critical Roles

So, we’ll be beginning with the first step in the process, which is to identify critical roles. The goal is to identify the roles in your organization that should be targeted as a part of your succession program. Some tips for getting started, including beginning with upper management and leadership positions. We often do start at the highest level, the executive level of an organization. We do a lot of different consulting with different clients, and that is indeed most common for us to start with the executive team.

But also, that’s just the beginning place, and we do hope to roll it down to the next levels of leadership. We also will continue to consider what are other critical roles in the organization and who we should be planning for.

So other key roles can even include administrative staff or highly technical areas. So maybe your software engineer is considered a critical role as they have specialized knowledge, institutional knowledge, and other critical competencies that are contributing to the success of the organization. So, you can think of critical roles as if this person left the organization today, how would that directly impact operations? So that gives you a good idea of who is really critical in your organization. However, you know, an ideal succession plan would actually plan for all positions in an organization as likely if they are working for you and a part of your team, they’re likely contributing to your operational success.

So, at this time, it’s important to consider both essential people and essential positions. As we get through the process, we’ll really focus on the role itself and not people. But at this very early stage, it’s okay to consider both.

Step 2: Build Success Profiles

Step two in the process is to build success profiles. The goal here is to describe the competencies and other knowledge, skills, and abilities that are necessary to perform each critical role.

So, we believe in creating one success profile. Here we call it a SIGMA success profile for each critical role. And what’s important when creating success profiles is to consider behaviors that are important for success in the role, success in the organization more broadly, especially if they’re on a leadership team, it would be success on the leadership team.

And then lastly, success in the role, both now and into the future. So, we’d like to engage in strategic thinking about the future, and often we have leadership conversations around where the organization is going. And that allows us to identify competencies that might be important for the next generation of leaders.

Success Profile Example

So, to put this more into context for you, here is a success profile that has been adapted from a real client example of ours. So, for this example, the succession position is an HR director. We’ll call the current incumbent Jane Smith. And Jane is actually expected to have a vacancy at the end of this year, in 2024, making her a top priority, a five out of five-star priority.

Then you’ll notice on the left-hand side, we have more traditional information that would be seen on a job description. So, we have some information about the position demographics. Her location is in Texas. She’s a Level 2 in the area of human resources, and then some position criteria. Again, this would often come directly from a job description. So, let’s say they need a Bachelor’s in HR related field. Because of the level of seniority, we’re looking for eight-plus years in HR. Some experiences include leading teams, designing HR programs, knowledge of benefits and payroll, and the ability to leverage HR software.

However, you’ll notice that a larger portion of the success profile is really focused on competencies. So, in the middle row, this is actually the competencies needed to be a leader on her executive team. So, all of the other executives would have the exact same list and it represents what is required to be a leader at this organization.

So, you’ll see some important and interesting competencies here like decisiveness, objectivity, prioritizing, and communication. We also have some future-oriented competencies for this leadership team, including social astuteness and technical orientation.

And then on the right-hand side, we go into core role competencies, other words, competencies needed for her position. And then you see some different competencies here that might be related more to the HR functions, such as open-mindedness, valuing diversity, attracting staff, and developing and coaching others. There’s also two future core role competencies, including vision and client/customer focus.

So holistically, this gives you a good sense of what is needed to have success in the role and gives you a good base for then assessing others and how they would currently stack up to this current position.

Step 3: Nominate Successors

So now that we’ve built success profiles, we’re ready to move on to step three, which is nominate successors. The goal here is to consider potential candidates for each critical role. Some tips we have in this is to challenge yourself not to only include direct reports but think more cross-functionally across roles and teams. So, we call this casting a wide net. We encourage people to think pretty broadly around who could be a potential successor. And this is even more important if you have a small organization.

Obviously, there will be times where you need specific expertise in order to occupy a role, such as if it was a leader in engineering or things like that, where that technical expertise is required. Other times, you may have people who could actually be considered across many benches due to their generalist skill sets.

And you can think of the leadership pipeline feeding into your role rather than simply the next successor. So, we like to say we are not considering the next successor. We are simply creating a bench. And we do not select the successor until there is a vacancy and that vacancy needs to be filled. So, at this point, you just have a bench of successors who you are considering for future leadership positions and have intentions to develop.

And you can also consider candidates who might be ready for the role soon, as well as those who won’t be ready for a little bit of a longer term. So, if you’re looking at creating a bench of successors, you could have some people who could be ready as soon as six months to a year, but you could also have people on there that won’t be ready for five years. So that creates some flexibility and some open-mindedness, especially if you know that the current person in the role will not be leaving anytime soon. Perhaps the only exception would be for Jane Smith, we know she’s leaving by the end of the year, so we may begin to think of people who could fill her position more immediately.

How to Complete the Succession Bench Form

So here is our succession bench form. This is available, again for free, on our website if you want to go to sigmaassessmentsystems.com. So, we’re looking at that succession position of the HR director who is currently occupied by Jane Smith. And we can see that we have three candidates identified for her position. And we have Level A, B, and C candidates.

Level C candidates are going to be ready in five-plus years. Level B candidates will be ready in three to five years. And level A candidates will be ready in one to three years. So, she has two level A candidates and one level B candidate. So, we have the first and last name of those candidates, as well as we have the date in which they were added to this succession bench, which allows for tracking over time.

For example, you can see that Katurah Zan was once a Level B candidate added to the bench in April of 2022, but she has since progressed to becoming a Level A candidate as of June 2023. So, we add this in here so you can track progress over time and understand movement in your bench.

The last portion of this shows the succession path. So currently, Katurah Zan is an HR manager and would be ready as the next step to become an HR director. However, we have our Level B candidate, Sara Jenson, who is currently an HR lead and would need to become an HR manager before she could take on the role of an HR director. So, this just shows how we do consider a wide variety of candidates, even if they’re not immediately ready and even if they need to take on one or two more roles before, they would be eligible for the next position that you’re trying to fill.

Step 4: Assess Development Needs

All right. At this time, we’ve identified critical roles, built success profiles, and nominated successors. So now we’re ready for step four, which is assess development needs. The goal is to identify candidate’s development needs and strengths as well. And assessing candidate skills really serves a number of purposes, including determining the strengths and development priorities, validating each candidate’s position on succession bench, and assessing a baseline skill in which we can evaluate development or coaching success. And these goals can be accomplished in a couple of ways, but especially we encourage using scientifically validated assessments that measure skills relevant to the succession position.

So here at SIGMA, we have assessment called the Leadership Skills Profile Revised, otherwise known as the LSPR. And it measures these different competencies that you’ve just seen on the success profile. So, it draws from a 50-commitment model of leadership competencies, and it assesses individual strengths and development areas to help cross-validate what the candidate will need in order to grow, and that can be compared directly to the created success profile.

Step 5: Develop Talent

So, once you might assess the development needs and you know what those strength and development areas are, you’re ready to begin development. So, the goal here is to use development and coaching to take potential candidates and to guide their development into very capable successors. And developing talent involves helping candidates to determine their development priorities and create development action plans. It involves empowering them and supporting them and finding opportunities to learn and practice new skills and overcoming obstacles or challenges to successful development.

So, I think this is where we see the most time investment needed from the organization, even though this is step five. The first steps are really integral into the planning and the understanding of the role and what’s needed. It’s good to take stock of the talent. But the most time-intensive will be this developing talent portion. And we do sometimes see organizations drop off at this point.

But going back to what I was saying earlier, this is really critical as it is the preparation to get your candidates ready, as well as it can really be a good engagement and retention tool that people feel invested in in this development process.

How to Plan Development Activities

So, here’s that simple activity form that you can use to plan some development activities. We have also a development planning action form for the candidates themselves. So again, lots of free resources on our website.

And you can see the three candidates, two Level A, and one Level B candidate are listed here with some ideas and brainstorming for their planned development activities. So, you can see that the two Level A candidates, so Jerry Cole and Katurah Zan, they have in their planned development activities some job shadowing. So that’s great for a Level A candidate as it does take more time, especially off of your current role and investing in looking at a new role and also time for the person in that role to engage in the job shadowing. But we know that this is a really powerful development method and people get real insights into the role.

We would also recommend for those Level A candidates some executive coaching. We have a great executive coach in-house and we do encourage organizations to support this development process with coaching. It can be really powerful for helping people to understand assessment results, their development areas, and get support in that development.

For Sara Jenson, as a Level B candidate, we would just recommend more self-directed learning. If you have a learning management system or other self-directed learning opportunities, that is what we give for a Level B candidate as they’re a little bit more growing and we can’t invest all of our resources in them at this time.

And then we’d also recommend for this group providing group training opportunities where the entire group can come together to be trained. Let’s say it’s on a leadership competency and you’re discussing, let’s say, communication techniques and having an engaging discussion. And group trainings can be really helpful as they reinforce a culture of training and development. And it also includes all people to get the relationship building and that shared understanding.

Step 6: Measure Progress

All right. Now we’re on to our last step of the process, step six, measure progress. The goal here is to track progress, boost engagement, and quantify success. So, some tips we have in this area are to use metrics that best reflect success in your company. So, this is where you want to do some reflection. Why are you engaging in succession planning? And at your organization, how would you know if it’s successful?

Examples of common metrics include rates of turnover. So, let’s say turnover is a problem at your organization. You’re seeing annual turnover rates around 40%. Maybe it would be a big win if, through this engagement of your workforce, you could reduce that to 25%. Could also look at the percentage of roles filled internally versus externally.

And one that I think is quite powerful is quantifying how long vacant roles remain vacant for. So, let’s say there’s an average vacancy amount of four months for any role that becomes vacant. And if you could reduce that to just one month, that would be pretty powerful.

So before beginning your succession plan, we recommend you record these metrics as a baseline and then update your metrics every six months to a year to evaluate progress over time.

Common Pitfalls in Succession Planning

All right. So that was our six steps. And now we’ll talk about some common pitfalls in succession planning. The most common pitfalls include only focusing on the executive level. So yes, I did say we often start there, but it’s important to think about expanding beyond just the executive level, especially the larger your organization, the more important this is. So, then you’d want to focus on the next level of senior leaders, the middle managers, supervisors, and really as time goes on and as resources become available, continuing to roll this succession plan down to the entirety of the organization and engaging all employees and creating a culture of development.

Another pitfall is keeping the succession plan a secret. You don’t have to call it a succession plan, but it’s important to talk about the activity that’s going on so that people don’t hear it in a telephone-like style and begin to have questions around what it means for them and maybe even making them worried. So, you could even frame it as a talent development exercise or other ways of framing it, but transparency is always key.

Another common pitfall is delegating all tasks to HR. A succession plan is a strategic leadership initiative and requires the buy-in of senior leaders in order to make it effective. If HR does not have a high level of formal authority within the organization, it’s going to be really hard for HR to be the one fully overseeing this, especially if it requires buy-in or development from other people in the organization.

Another pitfall is failing to document the process or update the plan over time. You can imagine this does require some front-end planning, but after that, there needs to be an ongoing update of the process. So, if people are leaving the organization, joining the organization, switching teams, each one of these things requires an update to the bench. If the organization reorganizes, you might need an update to a critical role and its success profile. So due to the ongoing shifting nature of most organizations, it really requires that you come back to your succession plan and update it over time.

And then lastly, one of the biggest pitfalls is the actual implementation of the plan. Let’s say you spend a lot of time planning, but then no implementation occurs. And we know from data that 67% of well-formulated strategic plans fail due to poor execution. Additionally, one in three leaders rate their company as poor or very poor at implementing strategic plans.

Success Rates of Strategic Plans

So, we’d love to hear from you. How successful is your team in implementing strategic plans?

If you can go ahead and use the same poll as before or rejoin at menti.com using the code 77467764. Or again, feel free to scan this QR code.

Give it another 30 seconds.

All right. So, I see that 50% of our audience today says, “We always follow through on strategic plans.” And I’ll just say congratulations. That’s the highest I’ve seen that number. And that’s really great. And another half of the group says, “We sometimes follow through on strategic plans.”

So, companies may take time to develop a succession plan but then fail to adequately develop their talent and adequately prepare each candidate for a future position. So, if you do invest a lot of time in this process, in identifying critical roles, building success profiles, nominating successors, it’s really important that you continue to actually take the steps to keep people on track and aware of the plan and begin that development process and really invest time, energy, and resources into the development of those next generation leaders.

Benefits of Working with a Succession Planning Consultant

But if your organization is struggling with this, this is where a consultant can help. So, my team has many wonderful consultants. Many of us have a Ph.D. in industrial organizational psychology or another similar background. So, we love working with clients. And here are some of the things in our experience that we feel consultants can support you with.

First and foremost is time. Time seems to be the biggest challenge across organizations, especially as organizations are running more and more lean. And using streamlined methods can really help to save administrative efforts. So, we have a Succession Planning Launch is what we call it, launching you into succession. And this process has been designed to minimize the amount of time required from your team, especially your senior leaders.

Another thing consultants can support you on is the process. We have this six-step process that is tried and true and has been updated with many organizations facing similar challenges. And we really think that our processes are effective and evidence-based in that nearly everyone can benefit from using them.

Additionally is accountability. This goes back to that challenge of implementation, but by acting as strategic partners, we can support holding your team and your organization accountable to your goals. Is there someone from the outside saying, “Hey, have you thought about this in a while? I thought this was a priority,” things like that, and it can really help organizations to stay on track.

Next is objectivity. Again, this is something we really think is a big value add of a succession plan, is making these unbiased decisions, and especially in the identification of your best candidates. And we have even had people come back to us quite frequently after succession planning session and development activities and they say, “I really was convinced X person was going to be the person who was going to be my successor. But through this process, I realized that this other person was really the best candidate from the role, and I wouldn’t have realized that otherwise.” So, it’s cool to see when that happens and how we can add more objectivity to the process.

And lastly, expertise. By drawing on the experiences of clients who have been in your shoes in the past, we can really help you to tailor your succession plan as you need it. For example, sometimes we see when we come in and work with organizations that one person is wearing two or three hats in their leadership role, occupying a leadership position over multiple functions. And so, we have the expertise to help you work through that challenge, maybe split the role into two or three roles, and create succession benches for that. So we’ve seen a lot of different examples and like to support you in whatever way you need in a custom approach.

Top Business Challenges

So, we’ll ask you another poll question, which is, what are the greatest challenges your team faces?

We’d love to hear from you. What are the greatest challenges your team faces? Is it time, buy-in, knowledge, standardization, having a dedicated team, or maintaining a long-term commitment?

Wonderful. I’m seeing time emerge as a top challenge. Again, we see that very often. And no one said buy-in or a dedicated team. So, it makes me think that we have some really great team and individuals in our audience. Other challenges are knowledge and standardization. So definitely, we kind of overcome the standardization challenge by having templates and processes in place. And just seeing now that another emerging top trend is having that long-term commitment. So again, that’s something we see a lot too. People can get really inspired by the planning process but kind of drop off their engagement over time and their commitment to a succession process.

So, thank you so much for engaging with us. Oh, getting another one in. So having a dedicated team is also a challenge for some in our audience. Thank you.

How SIGMA Can Help Your Business

So, we just want you to know that we’re here to help, regardless of your current organizational position and budget. So, we have some free resources available to you on our website that you can access at any time. And this includes our succession planning guide, where you can follow our simple six-step process to implement and scale your own succession planning process, along with a lot of downloadable, form-fillable PDF templates that you can work on to help get worksheets, checklists, and guides to help organize your plan.

We also have some educational resources, lots of blogs and templates, and development tools on our website. But if you’re someone who would like some outside support to…you know, not having enough time for your team or other reasons, we’d love to work with you. So, you can engage with us for our succession planning launch, where you’ll get all of that, plus individualized consulting.

So, we actually come on-site and do two half-day sessions, often starting with your senior leadership team. And in between the two sessions, we have junior consultants that work very hard to do a lot of analysis, so taking some of that analysis and data processing off your plate, and we return to you a custom 12-month succession plan for each member of your leadership team.

We also do other custom consulting engagements. We’re pretty flexible and like to take on new opportunities. So, if you ever have unique needs and want some support, we’re there for you as well.

So, you can click here if you want to access some of this information. I’ll just pause five seconds to give you the ability to scan this QR code if you’d like. And again, if you’d like to learn more about our succession planning launch, you can look and see more on our website. This is a $20,000 investment, but it’s really streamlined to maximize the time of you and your leaders, and in return, you get that starting succession plan for up to a 12-month period.

And then we’ll be working with you side by side. You can email us and ask for any more questions, and we’d even be happy to continue our work together. And you can contact me at athompson@sigmaleader.com, or you can reach out to anyone else on our team, or let us know if you need anything in the Q&A. So, with that, we’re going to wrap up with a Q&A. You can ask us anything, and we’d be happy to answer your questions.

Q&A Session

Helen: Thank you, Arieana. Okay, so feel free to keep posting questions as we go. I will start with what we have here. And like Arieana said, if there’s anything that we don’t get to, we’re always happy to follow up over email. I’ve been posting the links to some of the resources and services that Arieana has mentioned in the discussion for you. That should also pop up under the Q&A tab. And I will also send you the link for a new option that we have called the Succession Planning Diagnostic. It’s a five-minute survey that you take completely for free, and it lets you tell us a little bit more about where you’re at, and you discover yourselves where you’re at on the succession planning process. You get a score for each step, and then you also unlock a free 30-minute consultation.

So, you’ll get a little one-on-one with Arieana or one of her colleagues, and they can speak with you in a bit more of an individualized manner about the needs that you have at your organization. So, if some of what you’ve heard here has piqued your interest, then click on that link and take a look at that. Like I said, it’s completely free, and you do get a little bit more private guidance on what might be a good fit for your organization.

1. Who Should Be Involved in the Succession Planning Process?

Okay, first question. So, you said not to delegate it all to one person. Who should be involved in the succession planning process apart from HR?

Dr. Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the question. I think ideally, you’ll have, first and foremost, leadership buy-in. So, because succession looks towards the future and where the organization is going in a longer term, it’s really important to have the leadership buy-in, and that’s often where you start your succession plan. So, they need to be bought into attending sessions and helping you source key information, for example, for the success profiles, but it can be supported by HR.

But then as you begin completing a broader succession plan that touches on talent development, you also need that senior leadership support for investing in resources related to development, investing in time. So as the succession plan grows and more people are undergoing development activity, there should be more one-on-one conversations between direct reports and their leaders.

So eventually, a succession plan should be so strong that it engages the majority of people in the organization through coaching conversations, development activity, and an ongoing look of updating that succession plan over time.

Helen: Thank you. I’ll also send you guys the link to a blog that we have on creating a succession advisory team. Usually, when SIGMA works with organizations, they work with or we work with a team of people, and we refer to that as the succession advisory team. They’re kind of like your in-house champions for succession planning. So, in addition to HR, you might have some of those senior leaders that you’ve pulled in for buy-in, and you might also have incumbents of some critical roles who are there. And that blog will walk you through who should be on a team like that, who should spearhead the process internally so that you don’t just have one person who’s responsible for it.

2. Where Do External Candidates Fit into the Succession Planning Process?

Okay, here’s a good question. Where do external candidates fit into this process?

Dr. Thompson: Yeah, a very interesting question. Well, if talent was available within the organization and people were being fully developed for your next positions, it’s possible that you would not have any external candidates, that you would be increasing the amount of internal candidates to the extent possible and continuing to promote from within. And that is actually very engaging for employees to see this internal promotion being regular and constant throughout their organization, and it gives them a sense that, “Wow, I really could grow here, and I really could take on future leadership positions. And if I stay with this organization, I could eventually lead the organization.” So that can be very inspiring.

However, there are times when you might need to consider an external candidate. This can be the case if there is no one in your organization who has the capabilities that you’re looking for. You look and you… This is a rare instance, but we occasionally have leaders who say actually this is both a leadership role and a highly technical position. I see that most in the engineering space, but there are times when you need to bring in that external candidate to bring something new to your organization.

There might be other times as well, we’ve been seeing that a little bit with the shift towards AI, and people really want to bring in an expert related to niche topics. But still, I would say that, first, before you run out to get someone new who you think will change your organization, you could think about how you could upskill and develop your internal talent.

And I guess I’ll also say that this will also be most common at the individual contributor level, where we’re not able to draw from anyone beneath them. So, you just have to… If someone moves up and an individual contributor role becomes available, that would be more likely that you would use an external candidate.

3. How to Plan for Succession in Time-Scarce Environments?

Helen: Thank you. That’s super helpful. Okay. How can you properly plan for succession in an organization where time, for example, for training is a scarce commodity?

Dr. Thompson: Well, unfortunately, the reality is we invest our time on what matters. So, if this has been identified as a critical priority, you see that you have half of your senior leadership team retiring in four years, you have to make time for it. So, it has to become an organizational priority, and you can make it a priority by either hiring, so if you need to hire within your organization, or internally promote, and get somebody who is going to be focused on succession as a part of their role.

And otherwise, as mentioned, it’s a good time to work with consultants, bringing people in who are willing to support you in the work that needs to be accomplished, and lessen the load of that impact for your organization by using some outside support.

Helen: Thank you. Okay. I’ve got a quick question here just on whether you’ll receive a copy of the slides. Yes, we will be sending a PDF copy of these slides to you along with a recording of the webinar. So that’ll be available either later today or sometime tomorrow. So, keep an eye on your inboxes, and do check your spam in case you don’t see it.

4. How Much Transparency is Needed in Our Succession Plan?

Okay, moving on to a communication question. How transparent should we be with our succession plan?

Dr. Thompson: Yeah, a great question. I think transparency, the more the better. We’re seeing some trends in the workplace where employees want a lot of transparency in their role. They want to know what’s going on, how it impacts them, and they value and trust more organizations that communicate often and with specificity.

I’ve seen some extreme examples recently, such as organizations that are making their internal chats fully available to anyone in the organization. So, anyone at the organization can read other people’s chats. I’ve seen similar where you can access any meeting that’s going on in an organization. So maybe that is the extreme, but it’s not necessarily bad to see organizations taking radical transparency very seriously.

But for a succession plan, it’s really about helping to communicate why you’re doing what you’re doing. So, the reason is you want to plan for the next generation of leaders. You want to be prepared if there are vacancies. You want to be developing talent. You want to see people growing into new roles. So that’s really the essence of the communication, and you can tailor your communication around that to the extent it makes sense for your culture.

You don’t need to say, “Look, we’re doing succession, and we have these bench of candidates, and you might be considered,” although you can, especially if it’s to the next generation. Like, the people on your bench, you can say that. You can, but at that time, if you’re going to say that it’s important to say, “Look, we’re going through development efforts. We have not selected one. Nothing is guaranteed.” So that messaging can be really important too.

But just thinking about what do your employees want to know and put yourself in their shoes. If you were them, what would be important to know? And if you heard something from someone else, how would it make you feel if you weren’t given that direct communication first? So, I think those are some important things to consider as you’re planning and rolling out a succession plan.

Helen: Thank you. And correct me if I’m wrong, you sometimes have clients who will choose to use terms like talent development rather than succession planning when they’re facing their employees, just because succession can be a bit of a loaded term.

Dr. Thompson: Exactly. That’s exactly right, Helen.

Helen: Great. So that might be an option for you if you’re thinking we’re not in a place where we could communicate a succession plan without raising some alarm bells.

Concluding Remarks

Okay, well, I’m looking at the time. We’re going to wrap up here. So, if you have questions that haven’t been answered, please do send Arieana or myself an email. Before you go, I have a couple of announcements. One is that if you are here to collect professional development credits for either SHRM or ATD, please send me an email. Particularly for SHRM, I’ll need to send you a certificate of completion. So, my email is up on the screen there, and I’ll post it in the discussion as well. Just let me know that, hey, I was here for PDCs, and then I will send you a certificate.

If you liked what you saw here, as Arieana mentioned, we do have other webinars this year. So, head on over to the Events tab on our website. We’ve got just a couple left. And if there’s any topic that you don’t see on there that we maybe did this year, but you’d like to see in the future, please do let us know. We want these to be helpful and practical sessions for you.

And on that note, we do also take a look at feedback after every session. So, if you have a minute to tell us what you liked, what you didn’t like, scan this QR code and let us know what you thought. We adjust these webinars how we run them. Every time we do it, we want them to be practical and engaging for you. So, we appreciate any feedback that you’d like to share.

And that’s all we have for today. Thank you for taking time out of your workday to be with us, and thank you, Arieana, for your presentation. We hope that it was helpful for you all, and we’d be happy to continue the conversation if any of you want to discuss what this looks like in the unique context of your own organizations.

So, hope you all have a lovely rest of your day.

Dr. Thompson: Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.