Succession planning is less about the present, than it is about the future. Its focus is on ensuring that organisations have the right quantity and quality of leaders to meet the unpredictable business needs of the future. Says Steve Newhall, Managing Director at DDI UK.

Succession planning is less about the present, than it is about the future. Its focus is on ensuring that organisations have the right quantity and quality of leaders to meet the unpredictable business needs of the future. Contrary to what is often seen in practice, succession planning should not be reserved for senior-level roles, but should address the entire leadership pipeline.

According to the recent Global Leadership Forecast by Development Dimensions International (DDI), only 18 percent of HR professionals reported strong bench strength to support their organisation’s future needs, and when asked why, they cited lack of focus, strategy and formality of succession planning. Often an organisation’s rapid growth was cited as the reason for low bench strength, but other times it was purely a lack of foresight. Many companies believe that they have good succession plans, but in reality what they have is a replacement plan, focused on filling boxes that projects an image that all is well. Such a plan will often focus on superficial metrics and does not address critical factors for future business and leadership success.

Instead, HR and Talent professionals should identify and focus on the hard to fill and business critical positions and develop, stretch and retain key people so that they have the necessary skills to take on more senior roles. In addition, ongoing support and provision of opportunities for candidates to practice their newly acquired skills will ensure that organisations move towards their longer-term business objectives and sustainable business success. In short, strong succession planning must be seen as a strategic activity, aligned with business objectives, that goes way beyond replacement planning.

To help HR Directors formulate an effective succession management strategy, there are a number of critical factors, which are summarised in the following ten steps: 1: Translate business imperatives into a framework outlining the competencies, experience, knowledge and behaviours that are required for business success.

2: Assess your current leadership against this framework to establish the collective capability of the organisation’s leaders. What does the current pool of talent look like and is the company using the top leaders effectively? Are there any gaps between the company’s strategic objectives and the leadership resources at your disposal?

3: Identify critical skills and capabilities that are hard to find – are there suitable candidates within the organisation and are candidates ready and willing for a more senior role? What would happen to the business if they were promoted right now?

4: Identify business critical leaders with scarce skill sets and put in place risk mitigation strategies, including reward and motivation. Can these critical skills be learned by others in the organisation, or might they eventually need to be sourced from elsewhere?

5: Determine which roles have insufficient quantity or quality of succession candidates. How risky might it be to the business if these roles were to remain vacant?

6: Determine the development plans for potential successors, and recruit new hires where required. What additional development might be needed to support candidates in making the transition to a new leadership role? Work with the company’s talent management function to provide critical developmental experiences for the successor.

7: Implement an effective and formal high potential nomination process. This can be done with the help of a variety of screening and assessment techniques depending upon the seniority and how critical the role is to the company’s future success. Essentially, you are looking for candidates with the necessary motivation and potential to take on a more senior position.

8: Accelerate development of high potentials. Investment should be focused on those with the most potential and those most likely to bring about sustainable business success.

9: Focus interventions on highest risk roles. These are the roles that would have the most impact on the success of the organisation if they were to remain vacant.

10: Measure progress. Measurement should be determined from the outset. What indicators are required to establish programme success and how can they be effectively measured? Usually, this requires a benchmark metric at the beginning of a programme with continued measurement at set intervals to ensure the programme is on track and meeting business objectives.

Few would argue that organisations need to ensure that talent is carefully aligned and deployed against the evolving priorities of today’s and tomorrow’s business needs. The Global Leadership Forecast showed that 77 percent of HR professionals believe that Leadership succession is critical for future organisational success, but that only 22 percent believe that they have an effective system in place. Without more effective succession planning, expecting that the most capable talent will land serendipitously in the most critical positions, is highly unrealistic.