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Corporate Succession Planning Consultants

 

The frame of reference for our expertise in this area is based on:

  • Hands-on corporate experience from large international companies building succession plans for top 100 executives

  • +1000 in-depth executive assessments for C-level succession

  • +20 years’ experience in building models to forecasting the needs of executives for the future

We support organizations in building their succession planning process and conducting executive assessments.

“People talk about the hard decisions that have to be made, but they don’t pull the trigger”
— Stephen Drotter
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You can read more about The Succession Pipeline – How to get the talent you need when you need here.

 

Why Many Organizations Struggle With Succession Planning

 
 
 

A Framework for Executive Succession Planning

The term succession planning is interpreted and applied in many different ways. Whereas we can appreciate most of the practices we have come across, most of them fail to take a holistic approach to management succession planning. Often, they are governed by one specific objective only, driven by one executive who is short-term oriented or only focuses on replacing a soon-to-retire CEO.  

We urge organizations to look at succession planning like any other business-critical planning process and include it in quarterly business strategy reviews. This also includes taking both an operational, tactical and strategic approach to succession management and planning.

 
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Operational Succession Planning

Operational succession planning has a time horizon of immediate nature. This is where you ensure that you have a list of immediate potential successor candidates for different senior positions and key positions. This is important to have in place in order to be able to manage sudden unexpected resignations.

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Operational Succession Planning

Operational succession planning has a time horizon of immediate nature. This is where you ensure that you have a list of immediate potential successors for different senior positions and key positions. This is important to have in place in order to be able to manage sudden unexpected resignations.

Often, leadership and CEO succession plans are merely pieces of paper or excel sheets with lists of names – the operational succession planning. In reality, when a vacancy emerges, someone not even on the leadership team list is selected because the list is outdated or because people on the list never really qualified to be on the list due to the absence of a thorough and rigorous talent pipeline process for compiling the list.

In connection with their operational succession planning approach, some companies include Leadership Transition Assessments. This is a structured interview that will enable the interviewer to map the extent to which the leader has fully transitioned into his/her current leadership level measured against the Leadership Pipeline framework and thereby evaluate to what extent and when a leader is ready to move to a new leadership level. The Leadership Transition Assessment will normally be followed by an individual development plan.

The Leadership Transition Assessments are always combined with our Leadership Performance Index survey and sometimes also behavioral personality assessment tools.
A man on a scooter. Learn more about tactical succession planning below.

Tactical Succession Planning

Tactical succession planning has a time horizon of one to five years. This is where you look three to five years ahead and start planning who could potentially take what positions three or five years from now. But even more important, you actively use positions in the organization to develop and prepare the people in question.

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Tactical Succession Planning

Tactical succession planning has a time horizon of one to five years. This is where you look three to five years ahead and start planning who could potentially take what positions three or five years from now. But even more important, you actively use positions in the organization to develop and prepare the people in question.

This leads to tough and thorough discussions about the people in question. What positions do they need to perform in before they are ready for positions one or two levels higher up in the organization? How do we free up these positions?

In order to operate at a tactical level with succession planning you need a company-wide structured people review process. It is not sufficient to have one-and-one performance talks. These one-and-one talks must be validated with a broader audience of leaders – typically the management team. It must be highly evidence-based discussions about both performance and potential.
Two people looking at a document. Learn more about strategic succession planning below.

Strategic Succession Planning

Strategic succession planning has a time horizon of five to ten years or even longer. This is where you build the Leadership Pipeline framework into your recruitment process, your performance management process and the leadership development process.

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Strategic Succession Planning

Strategic succession planning has a time horizon of five to ten years or even longer. This is where you build the Leadership Pipeline framework into your recruitment process, your performance management process and the development process.

Many organizations find succession planning challenging at the executive level. But the problem is often created at lower levels in the organization. Many leaders at lower levels were never supported in their leadership transition from one level to another, or they skipped a level, and suddenly they lack critical leadership skills and operate at too low of a leadership level.

Likewise, most organizations come to realize that they have too few leaders with potential for senior positions. The reason may not even be the lack of a structured development and assessment approach but simply that they did not from the onset focus on recruiting a sufficient number of people with executive potential. You can certainly develop all leaders. But not all leaders can be developed into successful executives. You need a strong recruitment process where you hire not just for today but also for tomorrow. This calls for both the right succession process and the right tools.

The Leadership Pipeline framework can play a role at all three levels of succession strategic planning. However, especially in relation to tactical and strategic succession planning, it is absolutely critical to use the Leadership Pipeline framework.
 

 How We Work With Organizations

 

We have specialized in supporting organizations in implementing succession planning at all three levels. There are different approaches to implementing the Leadership Pipeline principles. Also, different organizations have different sweet spots for starting the implementation. We work with your organization on your terms, and we start where it is most important for your business goals. The scope of our role depends on your needs and the internal resources you have in place for the project.

Our contribution would most often focus on:

  • Designing and implementing the succession planning process

  • Building the succession planning process into the business review process

  • Creating a succession planning forecast model for the organization

  • Defining performance standards for different leadership roles

  • Implementing a structured and strategic recruitment process

  • Conducting Leadership Transition Assessments

Most companies start with two or three of the above initiatives. The extent of our involvement in each area varies from assignment to assignment. We have provided international succession planning services in over 20+ countries. Speak with one of our enterprise succession planning consultants to learn more.

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Want to learn more about how our succession planning consultants can partner to address your organization’s challenges?