Leadership Succession Planning
Leadership succession planning is an ongoing process that aims to train employees on various aspects of your business, guard against the loss of top executives, and promote loyalty within the company. Without a succession plan, your company could lose key personnel who could retire, get sick, or be poached by a competitor. Your organization's growth and financial stability can be put at risk.
Exponential Results can help you create a plan to train future leaders of your company to reduce these risks. Discover why identifying and training leaders is an important function of long-term success for your business.
Identify Candidates With the Best Skills and Values
When leadership roles become open, it’s critical that the company be able to replace them quickly. A successful succession plan provides clear criteria to identify which employees have the potential to fill those positions.
A succession planning process also encourages those employees to develop their skills. It can include a training program, career development, job shadowing, and mentorship programs. Ideally, it will also incorporate specific leadership-related objectives and key results into the employee’s performance plan.
It’s also important that the entire company buy into the process. Managers should be encouraged to help identify potential successors on their teams and refer those individuals for evaluation. This way, a succession planning team can grow organically and with a wide range of experience. Exponential Results can help you identify a robust and qualified pool of candidates that can take over leadership positions when the need arises.
Preserve Continuity of Business Operations
The benefits of leadership succession planning go beyond preparing an internal candidate for future roles. It also helps companies preserve the continuity of business operations. A change in management can happen quickly, whether an employee quits, retires, or is fired. Without a plan, a company may find it difficult to fill the void and keep operations running smoothly until a replacement can be found.
The process of identifying and training candidates for leadership positions can be done within an organization in many ways, including mentoring and job shadowing. Encouraging current managers to participate in the process can help ensure the success of your leadership succession plan. They know the company and its employees well, so they can help identify the most qualified people to lead the organization in the future.
Create Training Plans for Development
Leadership succession planning helps businesses cultivate a pool of workers who have the potential to fill in leadership roles when required. These employees are identified as succession candidates and receive customized training plans to improve their skills and expertise in key areas that will prepare them for leadership positions.
The process of developing these individuals shows the company cares about the professional advancement and career goals of its team members, providing motivation for these individuals to stay with the organization. In addition, managers are encouraged to mentor these individuals and transfer their knowledge and expertise. This helps the business avoid the high costs associated with sudden or unexpected leadership changes. At Exponential Results, we can help your business create an effective leadership succession plan to help your business succeed in the long term.
Develop and Maintain Company Culture
Leadership succession planning helps to develop and maintain a company culture. It gives employees a clear path for their future and the opportunity to advance within the organization. It also helps to reduce office politics and disruption that could occur during a change in leadership.
We can help you create a plan to prepare successor candidates for leadership responsibilities by providing mentorships, job shadowing, and other forms of on-the-job training. It can also help to ensure that the incoming leader understands how the new role fits into the overall company mission and culture.
Having a succession plan in place can provide peace of mind for business leaders as they consider retirement and other life changes. It can also help to prevent the costly impact of a sudden leadership transition that would leave a key position vacant for too long.
Reduce Overall Organizational Risk
When leadership changes, having a plan in place to fill critical roles can save the company time and money. It can take weeks or even months to find and train replacements for senior managers who leave a company. Succession planning can be a sensitive subject for employees whose careers are being targeted by management, but providing transparency and clarity around the process can help to reduce resistance from team members.