Ultimate Guide to Executive Succession Planning

Executive succession planning is a bit of a buzzword in the upper tiers of most company hierarchies.
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Ultimate Guide to Executive Succession Planning 1

Executive succession planning is a bit of a buzzword in corporate boards and the upper tiers of most company hierarchies. But what is it? And how can you make sure that your company does it right?

In this ultimate guide, you’ll see a talent risk perspective on corporate succession planning and how to do it effectively.

Learn how we can help you with your Executive Succession planning.

executive succession planning
The Ultimate Executive Succession Planning Guide 2020

 

What is Executive Succession Planning?

Executive succession planning is preparing for the eventual departure of key executives in leadership roles, either through retirement, promotion, or some other exit.

This planning is typically done on a regular cadence so that companies can mitigate the risk of losing a senior management official. It’s also done to create continuity and identify up-and-comers that organizations can groom, train, and perhaps find rotational opportunities for.

In short, succession planning is all about strategically directing leadership development and making sure that the next generation of company leaders is ready to take over when needed.

 

Traditional Succession Strategies vs. The Steve Trautman Process

To understand why leadership succession planning is so hard to get right, we first need to look at some of the traditional strategies that companies have been using to navigate their business transitions.

Traditional succession strategies often include practices like the 9-box model, nominating successors based solely on titles, and the short-list method. (More on these below)

Here at The Steve Trautman Co., we’ve developed a more robust succession process that resolves the problems found in traditional methods. But before I share how we do things differently, let’s explore a couple more traditional models and identify their flaws.

 

The 9-Box 

The 9-box model is a popular succession planning matrix. The 9-box is a 3×3 grid, with gradient qualities listed in each of the 9 sections. 

When it’s time to nominate a departing executive’s successor, a company’s leadership team or board will sit down and plot possible successors on the 9-box. Those who make it to the top right of the matrix are usually the ones selected for the position.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with doing a 9-box to help estimate which candidates would make better successors. But the problem with basing your final decision on this method is that the 9-box is based largely on subjective opinions about candidates, not hard facts about the job at hand.

 

The Short List 

Another traditional method is the “short list.” This is when a senior management official maintains an inventory of the people they consider possible successors for the leadership role, either from within the company or from another organization. Should the official depart, a name from their short list is called forth to take the exec’s place. In theory, these directories sound like an effective succession planning model. The reality, though, is another matter.

This is because companies have many high-level officials, but only a finite pool of talent to draw on when it comes to choosing their successors. So, what commonly happens is that many executives have the same name written at the top of their short lists!

This poses a serious talent risk, because if someone on the index exits the organization, then some of the leaders have suddenly lost the person they each considered their own successor. 

 

How We Do Succession Planning the Right Way

The Steve Trautman Co. is uniquely qualified to provide a solution to the succession planning problem.

Knowledge transfer and the development of leadership succession planning are our bread and butter. Our team of knowledge transfer experts has spent decades helping some of America’s largest companies carry out seamless and strong leadership transitions. These years of experience have given us the ability to accurately identify flaws in traditional methods and the tools needed for the development of a new leadership succession approach that becomes the key to solving those problems.

Our succession planning process is based on identifying the exact work that company leaders do and the skills they use. We then enter this data into a matrix where it is deconstructed into silos of related work and skills. By doing this, our succession process offers companies a better result through a more data-driven solution. Because we think about leadership succession planning in terms of the work that needs to be done, not simply the job title and personality.

 

Tools We Use to Make Succession Planning Easy

One of the unique advantages of partnering with The Steve Trautman Co. is that you will gain access to a suite of tools that we have spent over 25 years fine tuning for corporate succession planning.

These industry-leading succession planning tools include:

  • Knowledge Silo Matrix: a data-driven framework that deconstructs your executive’s expertise and knowledge. These are then sorted into genres of work (i.e. silos) and this helps us identify which successor candidate should be chosen and how many successors are needed.
  • Skill Development Plans: this breaks down the expert’s key tacit knowledge and other skills into tangible actions that can be taught and learned in one hour, allowing you to create programs to smoothen the transition experience.
  • Knowledge Transfer Sessions: teaches your executive how to effectively transfer key knowledge to successors.
  • Knowledge Transfer Test Questions: measures knowledge transfer progress and confirms that successors have the experience and ability to independently perform executive tasks.

 

The Steve Trautman Process In Action: a Case Study

Here is a quick case study of how Steve Trautman Co. helped a large international corporation retire one of its executives without any disruption, lapse in profitability, or issues with business development.

 

A Problem With Big Consequences

Recently, a company approached us about a problem they were facing.

One of the senior officials in the enterprise’s US operation had been wanting to retire for years, but every time his turn came to exit, he’d get a call from the leadership team in Japan asking him to stay — which he did. But this time, he was really serious about leaving. He was feeling older, had grandkids to tend to, and was ready to move on to the next stage of life.

Now, the Japanese leadership was faced with the daunting task of appointing a successor for the retiring high-level exec. When this organization approached Steve Trautman, they already had a successor in mind, but were worried that he may have trouble filling the shoes of the departing executive. They wanted our team of executive succession experts to ensure that their replacement was a good fit for the job.

 

How Our Succession Strategy Set the Stage for Success

In business succession planning, the first thing we did was come in and deconstruct the work that the senior official did. We did this by interviewing him and speaking with other employees on his team. Then we entered this data into our Knowledge Silo Matrix (KSM), dividing the work he did into blocks— identifying the specific tasks he completed each day and what areas of the corporation he was involved in.

Because this man had been at the company for so long, he had slowly accumulated over a dozen roles. For example, whenever he had been promoted, many of his old tasks simply followed him to his new position. Consequently, he had a massive range of work responsibilities — to the extent that even his own superiors weren’t aware of how much he was responsible for.

Unsurprisingly, there was quite a large disparity between the departing executive’s work responsibilities and skills and those of the company’s appointed successor. If the up-and-comer was expected to step into the entire role of departing executive, then he would be sure to fail.

 

How The Steve Trautman Process Resolved The Problem

By deconstructing the executive’s work and dividing it into seven silos, we were able to mitigate this problem in the following way: The organization’s appointed successor would take on the executive’s title and step into two of the seven work silos.

As for the remaining five silos, we showed the company two options.

Either they could work on the development of a support team to manage those silos for the next leaders, or the leaders could split those 5 silos off of the job’s role and hand them over to qualified staff .By following our specialized succession process, this high-stakes company was able to seamlessly retire the executive and replace him with an efficient set of successors.

 

Reactive vs. Proactive Succession Planning

Ideally, succession planning should be done proactively (i.e. before the executive is wanting to retire).

Proactive planning is better because it ensures that organizations are prepared and won’t be negatively affected if a top-level executive suddenly decides to leave.

 

The Difference Between Reactive and Proactive Succession Planning

The primary advantage of proactive planning is that it gives you time!

Time to accurately deconstruct the executive’s work, time to create special programs and groom potential successors, time to focus on the development of new roles, and time to carry out effective knowledge transfer between the exec and their successors. It also enables you to prepare successors far in advance of your executive’s departure. So rather than scrambling last minute to search for a replacement, you instead have a whole cadre of up-and-comers who have spent the last five years preparing to take over the executive’s role.

Proactive executive succession planning ensures that when the time comes to actually promote somebody, you won’t be dependent on an emergency shortlist of “who’s next?” but can rely on your network of prepared and capable successors.

 

Executive Succession Planning Done Wrong

In contrast to the successful case study shared above, here is a great example of what happens when reactive succession planning is done the wrong way.

 

The Ultimate Method of Executive Succession Planning

These are the steps our Certified Consultants will help your leadership team take in order to choose the right successor(s).

 

Step 1: Choose the person

Which executive are we building this succession plan for?

 

Step 2: Deconstruct their work

What does the executive do? Our team will use the Knowledge Silo Matrix to accurately identify all the hats the exec wears, as well as to quantify their tacit and implicit knowledge.

 

Step 3: Identify successors for each silo

Once the KSM is completed, we’ll use that to filter through your organization’s list of possible successors. Depending on the level of work required, it is not uncommon to distribute some silo tasks to more than one successor.

 

Step 4: Ensure that successors want to be groomed for the role

The success of this entire process depends heavily on the desire of successors to be promoted into the executive’s role. Communicate clearly to your choices and ensure they are aligned with your plans.

 

Step 5: Begin knowledge transfer

We’ll create in-depth knowledge transfer plans to prepare your successors. Knowledge transfer empowers your successors by enabling them to take control of their own learning from the expert. It clarifies what they need to learn how to do, instead of forcing them to guess at what they need to learn.

 

Result: A Superior Executive Succession Planning Method

By proactively following these steps, you and your stakeholders can rest easy knowing that a highly-trained network of successors is standing by, ready to step up when needed.

To learn more about what The Steve Trautman Co. can do for your organization, contact our team today to speak with one of our Consultants.

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