How solid is the succession plan in your organization? - SmartBrief

All Articles Leadership How solid is the succession plan in your organization?

How solid is the succession plan in your organization?

1 min read

By Mike Figliuolo 05/26/16

Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.

Last week, we asked: How solid is the succession plan in your organization?

  • We have a robust and up-to-date plan for all critical roles: 7.88%
  • We have a plan but it has some gaps in it: 29.12%
  • We know successors for a few key roles but not many others: 25.54%
  • We don’t have a succession plan: 37.47%

Who’s next? There’s a lot of turnover out there. Reorganizations, departures to new roles, hirings and firings. If you’re not prepared to fill the gaps that are created, you put your business at risk. Transition plans will suffer, people will be jockeying for jobs and the time to fill a vacant role will take much longer if you don’t have a solid succession plan in place. As a leader, you should at least be training your replacement and if possible, identifying replacements for other members of your team in preparation for the turnover that will inevitably happen.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”