Truth 39
Succession Planning Ensures Your Bench Strength

Successful athletic teams make sure that they have good players "on the bench" waiting to go into the game when needed. Their coaches are continually thinking ahead about what might happen. How does the game or the season need to play out? What particular challenges is the team likely to face? What players will probably fade or stay on the injured list? The coaches select and prepare their backup players accordingly. To make the best decision, they work hard to know every member of their team individually, including their strengths and weaknesses.

Knowing your bench strength is a clear asset to any organization. As a business leader, you need to make sure that you have the right players on your bench to competently fill your team's jobs, now and in the future. Strategic planning allows you to successfully play out future strategy and challenges. For instance, if you are establishing operations in remote locations such as China, you may need players with cross-cultural skills and the ability to work independently.

Planning also helps you avoid a damaging leadership "vacuum" when someone leaves suddenly. Say your head of operations suddenly decides to leave for personal reasons. Could you immediately name possible replacement players? Maybe you have someone to keep things going, but is she good enough for the long haul?

Bringing in someone from the outside may resolve things, but historically, new people brought in near the top of the organization have a poor survival rate. It's hard for others to accept them. So avoid a mad scramble by thinking about the potential within your organization now!

Many organizations use a "succession planning" approach to manage leadership talent. This is done well in advance of any vacancies. Although methods vary, the core process involves assessing the strengths of your current workforce to identify a strong bench of candidates for possible future positions. On an organizational scale, a succession planning exercise cascades through every level of an organization. But nothing can stop you from doing it independently to manage the needs of your own department or team.

A succession planning discussion typically includes the following stages:

1. Gathering your top team—all the leaders and managers directly below you who have a sense of how your organization needs to work. Succession planning takes time, so schedule a half-day in a quiet room. It also requires focus and objectivity, so bringing in an outside facilitator helps ensure an effective process. Have participants think in advance about the strengths and weaknesses of the players who report to them.
2. Establishing a discussion framework. The main factors you want to assess people on are performance and potential. The precise meaning you attribute to these terms, particularly potential, is up to you. You may want to rank people on leadership potential, or you may have specific challenges or situations in mind that you want to judge their potential against, such as the Chinese expansion just mentioned. The important thing is to develop a shared understanding of those terms before initiating discussion.
   A nine-box grid helps keep the conversation on track, with one axis assigned to potential and another to performance. Each candidate is placed in one of the boxes. The structure forces participants to take a stand about where each player falls. However, the placement is not definitive or scientific. What really matters is the discussion and the qualitative conclusions you draw from it about where each player is going within the organization. Ranking them is just a tool to help you get there.
3. Assessing the players. Guided by the facilitator, participants should discuss each team member against the two criteria, placing that person on the grid. The success of the process depends heavily on people explaining their thinking. You need to carefully examine the precise nature of the candidate's performance and how he displays his potential. You look at both positive and negative, asking what goals he has successfully delivered, as well as the ways in which he might fail.

A heated discussion about where to place the players usually occurs. This is desirable, because the more you discuss each person, the more you evaluate his or her potential. The facilitator should ask for the evidence behind any assertions, ensuring that people are judged as objectively as possible. What you are ultimately hoping to identify are enough people who are high enough on each axis to fill future leadership needs. As the group discusses the players, you all talk about what positions they can fill now or in the future. Be sure that you discuss all the positions that report to you, as well as other important ones.

A heated discussion
... usually occurs.
This is desirable,
because the more
you discuss each
person, the more you
evaluate his or her
potential.

What if a player you discuss is not quite ready for a more-responsible position? As part of the succession planning discussion, someone in the room must help identify the following:

• Specific jobs where the person can show that she can take on a challenging assignment by taking over a department or team that needs a turnaround
• Experiences such as a task force or a nonprofit board to broaden her skills and fill her gaps in strategic planning, for instance
• Training or other development opportunities to round out the person's skills, such as giving presentations

Your succession planning discussions are worth several hours of your and your team's time twice a year. This is a great way to keep developing your B players and ensure that your talent pipeline has players ready to move into the game whenever and wherever they're needed.

Succession planning is a great way to get you and your team thinking about the true state of your organizational leadership. But don't just make this a one-time exercise. The smartest leaders are continually thinking about bench strength. Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, was even known to keep assessments of his top executives in his top desk drawer so that he could review them regularly!