Coverage and Succession Need Separate Plans

Most succession plans list one "ready now" name under every key role, and leaders expect that person to handle two different jobs: stepping in if the role opens without warning, and taking it over when the leader retires or moves on. Each job needs its own plan, with someone agreed on in advance for the first and several people being developed for the second. Both plans are part of the Leadership Continuity Framework™, which lays out the full process, from identifying the critical roles to keeping the plan current as the business changes.

Coverage Comes First

When a vice president or a plant manager leaves without warning, someone has to keep the operation running until leadership names a permanent replacement. The executive team needs to decide in advance who covers the role during that stretch.

That person, known as the just-in-time resource, needs the trust of the executive team. Where there is an outside board, the directors should know them too. Often this is a senior director, below the executive level and not yet a vice president. They know which people in the organization can get things done, regardless of their titles, and they go to those people when a problem comes up.

They may have no interest in the permanent job. Someone with 20-plus years at the company who has said plainly that they do not want to be the next CEO can still hold a role steady, because they know how the company runs and the people in it trust them.

Once the executive team picks someone, its members need to have an honest conversation with them about whether they would take on the temporary assignment and what they want beyond it. Then, when a role opens, nobody has to ask whether the company trusts them to step in.

In some cases, the right stand-in is also the right successor. The executive team should still consider them for each job separately. Holding a role steady for a short stretch and leading it for years require different things.

Succession Needs More Than One Person

Succession is the permanent job, and it needs more than one person lined up. The on-deck successor, the person next in line today, may change roles or leave the company before the current leader moves on. If the executive team built its plan around that one person, the role has no successor once they are gone.

The people lined up behind the on-deck successor will not all be ready at the same time. Sorting them by how soon each could step in gives every role four tiers:

• Now: the on-deck successor, who could take the role today.
• 12 to 24 months: people who could step in after development, focused on what they lack.
• One to three years: people with the potential who need broader experience first.
• Further out: the outliers, including early-career people and new college grads.

Most roles will have at least one empty tier the first time the team builds the plan. The blanks show the executive team where it still needs people, and a role with no one in any tier is where the executive team needs to start.

Successors Need Targeted Development

Development starts with knowing where each successor falls short. For that, the executive team needs two things. The first is a clear list of the roles the business can least afford to lose. The second is an honest read on the people lined up for those roles: how they perform now and whether they could handle a larger job. With both, the team can see what each person lacks for the role they are being prepared to take.

The executive team then targets development at those gaps, tying each step to what a specific person lacks for a specific role. A company that funds development without a clearly named gap can show the board impressive programs and still have no one closer to taking over.

When I ran this process across a group of manufacturing plants, the first full round of reviews showed gaps in both performance and potential. Some plant managers did not understand how the company's commitment to doing the right thing applied to the decisions they made at their sites. We then started training to address those gaps and build the skills we wanted across the management team. After each round of reviews, we aimed the next round of development at something specific, so each round started where the last one ended.

The same approach works for one person. Take a strong operations leader being prepared to become a general manager. If they have never managed a budget, the next step is an assignment that gives them one.

When the Role Opens

Every key role will open at some point, through a retirement, a promotion, or a departure nobody saw coming. When it does, the executive team has to settle two things: who steps in right away, and who takes it over long term. If neither is decided ahead of time, the team ends up picking a stand-in it has never talked to and starting a successor search at the same time, while the operation waits on both.