Talent reviews and succession
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7 min read
Key findings
Critical roles are found by scarcity, position in the value chain and impact on outcomes, whatever their grade.
Directors label fewer roles critical once each label obliges them to name a successor and cost a vacancy.
Two named successors per critical role, with defined readiness bands, is a workable minimum.
Tacit knowledge transfers through paired work, reverse teaching, unusual cases and overlap at handover.
Emergency cover is a separate column, because the person who can keep the plant running for a quarter is often not the right permanent successor.
Succession planning for critical roles covers the positions below the executive team whose loss would stop revenue, service or a legal obligation within weeks.
For each one, the plan names at least one credible successor, states how ready they are, and sets a development action for the gap.
The hard part is agreeing the list with the business, because every director can argue that all of their roles are critical.
A list that includes every role is too long for a small HR team to maintain, and the plans on it go out of date.
Succession Planning For Critical Roles
Most succession plans cover the executive team and one or two layers beneath it.
Below that line sit the principal engineer, the regional operations manager, the senior underwriter and the plant maintenance lead, and few of them have a named successor.
David Weiss, Vince Molinaro and Liane Davey observe that many succession efforts are too generic and focused only on back-filling executive positions.
They treat succession management as risk reduction, meaning a lower chance of leaving a critical position unfilled or losing a high performer.
On that definition, the risk sits wherever a vacancy would stop the work, whatever the grade of the role.
How To Identify Critical Roles
Ross Sparkman sets out three methods for finding critical roles, and they work best in combination.
Labour market scarcity. Skills in high demand and short supply outside, shown by long time to fill and high attrition
The value chain. Roles inside the core activities that generate revenue or margin, such as sales roles in a sales-led business
Impact on business outcomes. Roles that drive results the business values, agreed with its leaders
Sparkman describes the third method as the most subjective, because it depends on how business leaders define a good outcome.
A single question makes that conversation concrete.
What stops, and when, if this role is empty for three months?
Ask it of operating managers, and ask for the consequence instead of the inconvenience.
Three kinds of answer mark a critical role.
A revenue line, a customer commitment or a production run halts
A regulatory or safety obligation goes unmet
A decision that nobody else is qualified to take is deferred or taken badly
The third answer is where the roles below the executive team usually appear.
A specialist with twenty years of context that nobody has written down rarely shows up on a list built from grades.
Agreeing The List With The Business
An operations director asked which of her roles are critical will often name all of them.
The label feels like protection for her people and her budget, and it costs her nothing.
The fix is to attach a consequence to the label.
David Edwards describes a workforce planning lead who set a firm rule for any role labelled pivotal.
Directors soon concluded that claiming a role as pivotal meant they had to fill it quickly.
Once the label carried work, directors began correcting roles they had labelled wrongly, and leaders saw that criticality had little to do with seniority.
Three consequences work well in practice.
Every critical role needs a named successor within one quarter
The director reports the cost of a three-month vacancy for each one
Each critical role gets a quarterly review, which the director attends
A cap per division also helps, because it forces a ranking.
Set the cap before the list is drawn up, and let the director choose which roles fill it.
Specialist And Technical Roles
Management succession has a familiar route, which is another manager.
Specialist succession has no equivalent, for three reasons.
The capability takes years to build, and a programme cannot compress it
The external market is usually tight, so hiring is slow and expensive
Part of the knowledge is tacit, so the holder cannot write it all down on request
Two common moves make specialist succession harder.
Adrian Furnham, Ian MacRae and Martin Reed describe the performance delusion, where the best performer in one job is assumed to be the best candidate for a different one.
A specialist role often goes to the strongest generalist nearby, or the strongest specialist is promoted into management, and both moves lose the capability the plan was meant to protect.
A specialist successor is judged against the specialist work, which means the current holder has to take part in choosing and testing them.
A holder who believes the plan is a prelude to their exit will cooperate on paper and teach very little.
Successors Per Critical Role
Two named successors per critical role is a workable minimum below the executive team.
One should be ready now or within a year, and one should be further back and developing.
A single name fails the first time that person leaves, declines the move or is needed elsewhere.
Readiness bands need definitions, or every name drifts towards ready now.
Ready now. Could take the role next month with normal support, on the evidence of work already done
Ready in one to two years. Has named gaps and a development action for each
Emergency cover. Could hold the role for three months without being the long-term answer
Emergency cover is a separate column, because the person who can keep the plant running for a quarter is often not the right permanent successor.
What happens when the plan meets a real resignation is covered in emergency succession planning when a leader leaves.
Succession And Replacement Planning
Replacement planning names a backup for a role as it exists today.
Succession planning asks what the role will need in three to five years, and develops people towards that.
Weiss, Molinaro and Davey give the example of a company leaving bankruptcy whose finance director was expert in renegotiating debt and tight fiscal control.
The succession review showed that the growth business coming next needed a different kind of finance director, with experience of growth and cultural change.
Below the executive team, the same test applies to a plant manager role that is moving to automation or a sales role that is moving to key accounts.
A successor who matches today's holder can be the wrong answer for the role three years from now.
Transferring Tacit Knowledge
Documentation projects capture the procedural part of a role and miss the judgement.
Four practices transfer the judgement.
Paired work on live problems. The successor watches the decision being made, with the reasoning said aloud
Reverse teaching. The successor explains a decision back and the holder corrects it
Exposure to unusual cases. The routine cases are usually written down already
Overlap at handover. Weeks of overlap, which is the cheapest insurance available and the first budget line cut
A one-page note per critical role, refreshed each year, records what the holder knows that nobody else does.
It takes about fifteen minutes to write, and it is the first document anyone asks for when the holder resigns.
The Conversation With The Role Holder
Asking someone to develop their own successor touches a real fear, and it needs saying openly.
Three things make the conversation workable.
Say what the organisation is protecting, which is continuity of the work
Say what the holder gains, such as leave they can actually take and a route to a larger role that needs cover to exist
Ask what they want from the arrangement, and act on at least one answer
A holder who believes the plan is a prelude to their exit will cooperate on paper and teach very little.
The same fear stops managers releasing good people for moves, which is covered in talent hoarding and managers who block internal moves.
When Nobody Internal Is Close
Some critical roles have no internal candidate and will not have one within three years.
Record that honestly, instead of filling the slate with hopeful names.
Three responses exist, and each has a cost.
Recruit ahead of need. A salary is paid before the benefit arrives
Contract the capability. A premium rate, with nothing retained when the contract ends
Redesign the role. Split it so that no single person holds all of it, which takes the most work
Redesign is often skipped, because it means asking why so much of the work ended up with one person.
Coverage A Small Team Can Sustain
Succession below the executive team tends to fail when it copies the executive process and the paperwork outgrows the time managers give it.
Three constraints keep it running.
Review critical roles quarterly and leave other roles to the annual cycle
Hold the record in three fields: successors, readiness and the current development action
Give ownership to the operating leader, and ask for it in their own business reporting
An HR business partner supporting several divisions can keep a list of this kind current where a full slate for every role would lapse within a year.
The annual talent review is the natural place to confirm the list, and how to run a talent review that changes decisions covers the meeting itself.
Reporting To The Executive Team
Executive teams hear about their own succession and rarely about the layer below.
Three numbers change that discussion.
Critical roles identified below the executive team
Of those, the number with no internal successor
For each of those, the cost of a three-month vacancy
The third number comes from the operating manager who answered the three-month question, so it is usually available already.
Present it alongside the executive slate, so that the board sees succession risk at both levels in one paper.
Where The Tools Sit
Trusted Talent Advisor covers the critical role definition and the succession slate in its component on talent review and succession.
Its template pack includes a critical role canvas and a handover record, and its stakeholder conversation component covers the discussion with a role holder about developing a successor.
Related reading: engagement survey action plan, entry-level cuts and the leadership pipeline.
Sources
1. Sparkman, R. Strategic Workforce Planning: Developing Optimized Talent Strategies for Future Growth. Kogan Page.
2. Edwards, D. The Strategic Workforce Planning Handbook. Kogan Page.
3. Weiss, D. S., Molinaro, V. and Davey, L. Leadership Solutions: The Pathway to Bridge the Leadership Gap. John Wiley and Sons Canada.
4. Furnham, A., MacRae, I. and Reed, M. High Potential: How to Spot, Manage and Develop Talented People at Work. Bloomsbury.
From the system
Trusted Talent Advisor sets out the full method: seven components, 51 tools, The Talent Template Pack and The Prompt Library.
See the system
Questions this answers
How do you identify critical roles for succession planning?
Combine three tests: skills that are scarce in the external market, roles inside the core revenue activities, and roles whose loss would hit results the business values. Then ask operating managers what stops if the role is empty for three months.
Should succession planning include middle managers?
Include middle managers and specialists whose roles pass the critical role test. Grade is a poor guide to risk, and many roles that would stop revenue or a legal obligation sit below the executive team.
How far down the organisation should succession planning go?
As far as the critical roles go, whatever the level. Cap the number per division so that directors rank their roles, and review that short list quarterly instead of covering every position.
What is the difference between succession planning and replacement planning?
Replacement planning names a backup for a role as it exists today. Succession planning asks what the role will need in three to five years and develops people towards that.
How many successors should each critical role have?
Two is a workable minimum: one ready now or within a year, and one developing. Record emergency cover separately, because the person who can hold the role for three months is often not the permanent answer.
How do you do succession planning for technical or specialist roles?
Judge successors against the specialist work, involve the current holder in choosing and testing them, and transfer knowledge through paired work, reverse teaching, unusual cases and a handover overlap of weeks.
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