How to Use SIGMA’s Critical Role Identification Questionnaire

Hi, I’m Brittney Anderson, a senior consultant at SIGMA Assessment Systems, and I’m here today to talk to you about our Critical Role Identification Questionnaire. This template, which you can download for free on our website, can help you with the early stages of creating a succession plan. A lot of organizations that we talk to are aware that succession planning is an important strategic process, but they struggle to find the resources or the supports to help them create a plan that helps them meet their goals.

This template is designed to help you in the early stages when you’re identifying which roles are important for you to prioritize in your succession planning efforts. Most organizations do create their succession plan to roll out in a phased approach. That means they’ll begin with a few roles, and then they’ll continue to create succession plans for more roles in the future. The number of roles that you choose will depend on the resources that you have available for succession planning.

Identifying Key Roles for Organizational Success

When deciding which roles to begin with, you can use the Critical Role Identification Questionnaire to compare the roles in your organization. Begin on the left-hand side by filling in some of the roles that might be important in your organization. Many people that we talk to begin with their leadership team. They’ll think about their CEO or executive director and move on to other roles like their head of operations, HR, or finance.

This is not a bad place to start. Most organizations are looking for a strong succession plan for their leadership team. When filling it out, I would encourage you to think beyond the leadership team as well. Are there any other roles that are important for the success and the function of your organization? And if so, you might want to include them at this early stage.

Critical Role Identification Questionnaire Criteria

Once you have noted some roles on the left-hand side, you can then look at the five criteria that make up this questionnaire. We’re going to be rating each role on these five criteria using the 1 to 5 rating scale.

Urgency

First, we’ll look at the urgency. How quickly do we expect to have to replace the individual in this role? If we’re looking at a near retirement or other reasons that the person might be leaving the organization, we’ll want to rate a higher urgency.

Impact

Second, we’ll take a look at the impact. How quickly would we feel it in the organization if this role were to become vacant? How challenging would it make us to execute on our functions or responsibilities?

Skills

Third, we’ll look at skills. How nuanced or specialized are the skills that are required to be successful in this role? If there’s specific training, education, or certification that’s needed, we may want to use a higher score here to indicate that the skills might be more challenging for us to replicate in the future.

Talent

In the final two columns, we look at talent. First, thinking about the internal talent pool. How challenging might it be for us to find somebody within the organization that would be willing and able to fill this position? Then, look at the external talent pool. How hard would it be for us to find somebody outside of the organization that could fill in for this role and be successful?

Ranking Criteria for Critical Positions

In all cases, the more priority or urgency that we might have for one of the criteria, the higher the number you want to use on the 1 to 5 rating scale. If you’re using the form-fillable PDF version of this template, you’ll see that as you go, the numbers are auto-tallying in the total column on the right-hand side. If you’ve printed it out or you’re using a paper version, you’ll have to fill in this total yourself.

Once you’ve completed the ratings for each of the roles, you can then compare their total scores. Roles with higher numbers might be more urgent or might need more priority for your succession planning efforts. You can use the star column on the far right to indicate which roles you want to begin with for your succession plan.

Comprehensive Template for Strategic Role Selection

I encourage you to hold on to this template and use it as part of the documentation for your succession plan. For the roles you’ve decided to begin with, this can provide a solid rationale and justification for why you chose to start where you did. For the future of your succession plan, you can revisit this template and look at other roles that were part of the consideration, and which ones now might be most urgent to create a succession plan for.

If you have any questions about how to use this template, or how it can help your organization to be successful in your succession planning goals, you can reach out to us at sigmasuccession.com, and we’d be happy to help.