Strategic People Decisions #6: Beyond Names In Spreadsheets

Imagine your Head of Engineering hands in her notice. Or the top salesperson gets poached, or the CFO finally retires to play golf in Spain like he’s been threatening to for three years. If your first reaction is a cold wave of panic, then whatever you’ve got, it isn’t succession planning. It’s hope, and while hope is necessary but it doesn’t cover a notice period.

The reason most plans fail is that the plan is aspirational rather than operational. Someone writes Sarah down as successor for the VP role, which is great for Sarah, except does she know? Has anyone prepared her for it? Has she had any training or even a single stretch assignment aimed at that job? Usually not, so when the VP leaves and Sarah isn’t ready, you hire someone else (after several months), and then everyone wonders why the succession plan didn’t work.

Most organisations plan succession for the C-suite, maybe the directors if they’re feeling thorough (or guilty), and stop, meanwhile the person who understands the legacy system, or holds the relationship with your largest client, is probably a critical individual contributor with nothing written down, and when they go you’re in the creek, you know, the brown one? And you left your paddle at home. Succession planning should cover load-bearing roles, not just senior titles, and those two lists overlap less than you’d hope. Mostly because people in senior roles aren’t really that important in day-to-day operations. No really. Honestly. You’ll agree eventually.

You probably only look at the plan annually (if it all), which sounds sensible but definitely isn’t because people change (literally and figuratively), priorities shift, roles quietly turn into different roles, and by the time you reach for the plan it’s describing a structure and group of people which, in all likelihood, doesn’t exist anymore. And underneath all of it sits a rather charming assumption: that everybody stays put.

Start SMALL

Work out which roles would cause the most trouble if they were vacated tomorrow. Not the org chart, the actual load-bearing bits: critical technical experts, the people who own key client relationships, the ones carrying institutional knowledge in their heads. Those are your priorities, and they come first. Hopefully only a handful.

Then stop putting one name against each of them, because one name is a single point of failure. For every critical role you want three, at different distances:

• Ready now: someone who could step in with minimal preparation

• Ready in 12 months: someone who’d need development but has the potential

• Ready in 24 months: someone early in their trajectory, worth developing anyway

That gives you options when the timing refuses to match your predictions, which it will.

Naming people isn’t the work, though, preparing them is: stretch assignments, shadowing the current role holder, a seat in the strategic meetings, responsibility that grows rather than arrives all at once the day after someone important leaves, or cramming it all in for three months during Mr Importants notice period (when he’ll be disengaged and useless, maybe). If you’re not actively developing your successors then you haven’t got succession planning, you’ve got a list of people you’d like to be magically ready.

And tell them, with their consent. The old model kept these plans secret, which made everything awkward and stopped anyone actually preparing. Far better to say plainly that you’re developing them towards a particular path, not promising the promotion but being honest about the direction, so they can prepare on purpose and opt out if they’d rather not go that way at all.

You need two plans really, and the second one is the boring one people skip. Alongside long-term development, every critical role wants an emergency sheet documenting who steps in immediately if needed, where the critical information lives, what genuinely can’t be delayed, what can wait for a permanent replacement, and which external contacts need telling. Thirty minutes per role, that’s all it takes, and it’s the difference between an orderly week and a fortnight of chaos.

Done well, this keeps people. They stay when they can see a path, when they know they’re being developed for something, when they feel valued rather than just employed. If you do it badly it does the opposite, quite efficiently. Someone who’s been “in development” for a promotion for three years with no visible progress leaves. Someone ready for more responsibility but blocked because the person above them isn’t going anywhere leaves.

Which means you’ll have to have some uncomfortable conversations, and I’d rather you had them badly than not at all. When someone thinks they’re next in line and you disagree, say so, clearly. What’s the gap? What would close it? Is it even achievable for them? Dodging that conversation doesn’t spare anybody, it just postpones the disappointment and adds resentment to it.

The harder one is when someone is ready and the role simply isn’t open, because that’s the moment they’re most likely to walk. Could you create the role? Widen their responsibilities? Hand them a project that’s promotion-level even if the title isn’t? If none of that’s possible, be straight with them: you’re ready, the timing isn’t, here’s what we can do meanwhile. Some will wait. Some won’t, and fair enough, but at least they’re deciding with the facts. And if the plan changes, tell them it’s changed. Don’t let them work it out from someone else’s promotion announcement.

A decent target is 70% internal promotions for critical roles. Not 100%, because external hires bring a fresh view and sometimes you genuinely haven’t got anyone ready. But if most of your critical roles are being filled from outside, something’s broken: either you’re not developing people, or you’re not keeping the ones you developed.

If you want somewhere to start, pick your five most critical roles and for each one:

1. List the current holders and when they might leave

2. Identify three potential successors at different readiness levels

3. Document emergency coverage if they left tomorrow

4. Create development plans for each successor

5. Schedule check-ins quarterly to review progress

It won’t be perfect, but it’ll be operational rather than aspirational, which is the whole point.

Which leaves one slightly uncomfortable test. If someone critical gave notice tomorrow, could you answer these within 24 hours? Who covers their responsibilities short-term? Who’s the leading internal candidate for the permanent replacement? What’s their readiness gap, and how long to close it? If you hire externally instead, what exactly are you looking for? If those answers don’t come quickly, what you have is a document exercise wearing the costume of a strategic capability. The organisations that handle sudden departures well aren’t lucky, they just did this bit early. Do it now, while nobody’s leaving.