Succession planning is an essential strategic process that ensures operational continuity when talent changes occur. SIGMA’s Succession Planning Guide makes this process simple by walking you through what is required at every stage of the process.

Why Plan for Succession?

Most organizations recognize the importance of succession planning, and yet over 1 in 3 companies don’t have a plan. This can be costly. According to a recent study by Harvard Business Review (HBR), the S&P 1500 forgoes close to $1 trillion in market value each year due to poorly managed CEO and C-suite transitions. HBR estimates that better succession planning alone could help increase annual company valuations and investor returns by 20-25%. Unplanned succession often forces companies to hire externally, rather than benefiting from a well-developed internal talent pool and leadership pipeline to feed succession. Most people know this. SIGMA has worked with thousands of organizations across North America, and what CEOs continuously tell us is that they don’t plan for tomorrow because they can hardly keep up with the demands of today. Planning for succession certainly requires an investment of time and effort, which is why we’ve developed a practical and convenient guide to our succession planning methods that walk you through each stage of the process.

SIGMA's Succession Planning Process

SIGMA’s Succession Planning Guide outlines our six-stage planning process. Each stage has its own tools and templates. This easy-to-follow succession planning outline will walk you through how to plan for succession in your organization:

Identify Critical Roles

The essential first step in SIGMA’s succession planning process is to identify critical roles. To identify critical positions, use our Critical Roles Identification Questionnaire. This tool will help you organize key positions and prioritize succession planning based on how important each role is to your organization, and how urgent the need for succession planning is. Begin with your own team, then scale this exercise to multiple teams and levels of the organization.

Build Success Profiles

After you’ve identified your organization’s critical roles, the next stage is to draft success profiles. Success profiles are templates for the skills and abilities needed to succeed in a particular position. Success profiles are similar to job descriptions in that they include position demographics (location, level, direct reports), and role requirements (education required, skills needed, and duties to be aware of). However, a success profile goes above and beyond traditional job descriptions in that it also includes leadership competencies that are needed for success in a role, or will be needed for success in the future. Use our Success Profile™ Template to outline success profiles for each critical role in your organization, and take a look at SIGMA’s LeaderBase if you are interested in accessing ready-made Success Profiles™ for common leadership roles.

Nominate Succession Candidates

Once a success profile has been built for each critical role, you are ready to nominate successors. Begin this process by using the Succession Candidate Nomination Survey to help your succession planning team evaluate the potential of each candidate. Results from the nomination survey are used to populate a draft Succession Bench that groups successors based on their readiness and provides an ‘eye-test’ measure of bench strength for the incumbent’s role. A well-maintained Succession Bench is also a great way to measure the success of your overall succession plan.

To fill out the nomination survey, begin by indicating the name of the candidate and the critical position they are being considered for. For each succession candidate, rate your confidence in their potential performance for this role and provide an estimated timeline for how long the candidate will need before they are ready to take on the position. For these estimates, it’s important to consider input from multiple sources. Consider consulting current role incumbents, senior management and succession advisory teams, leaders, peers, and direct reports of the succession candidate. To add context to your evaluation, take note of any additional information on the potential successor and their skills along with their ratings. Be sure to complete the Succession Nomination Survey for each succession candidate.

Once you’ve completed the survey for each candidate, fill out the Succession Bench Template to organize who your top candidates are for each critical position in your organization. To fill out this form, first indicate incumbent and urgency information for the key position and list succession candidates according to three levels:

  • Level A: Succession candidates ready for role in less than 3 years
  • Level B: Succession candidates ready for role in 3 to 5 years
  • Level C: Potential successors ready for role in more than 5 years

Provide the name and demographics for each succession candidate and record their progress over time. Use the Succession Bench Worksheet to track the overall strength of your succession bench as well as to monitor the success of individual candidates in improving their skills and becoming more qualified candidates over time.

Develop Talent

Before you can begin the development process, you will need to assess each succession candidate’s development needs. To do this, fill out the Candidate Profile Template. On this template, you will indicate target position information and report succession candidate demographics, education, and experience. Use your Success Profiles to provide position criteria, and use validated assessments (like SIGMA’s LSP-R) to evaluate the succession candidate on qualities required for the target role. List notable gaps between current candidate skills and those required for the target position in each category, then use this worksheet to identify priorities for candidate growth and talent development opportunities.

Develop Talent

After assessing development needs, you can begin the talent development process. To help structure this process we’ve created a Development Actions Form that identifies gaps in talent and allows you to monitor the development progress of succession candidates. Each of your potential successors should have their own Development Actions Form that is reviewed annually to help build their readiness for future roles.

To fill out this template, begin by providing information on the succession candidate and their current role in the organization. List all the positions that an individual may be a candidate for. Next, choose the top development areas from the Candidate Profile and rank the candidate’s development opportunities based on two criteria:

  1. What are the largest gaps between role requirements and the succession candidate’s abilities?
  2. What are the most important or frequently used skills of the role?

Work with the succession candidate to fill out their Development Actions Form and mutually decide which areas of talent development to focus on in the short, medium, and long-term. After you’ve selected top development areas, decide on specific talent development activities. Make sure you work together with each succession candidate to find relevant and accessible development opportunities that they are interested in. Try to provide a range of activities that will ensure the candidate receives well-rounded training, and use this worksheet to track progress and completion.

Measure Progress

Measuring success is an often overlooked, but very important part of every succession plan because it allows you to track and communicate year-over-year progress. Set a calendar reminder to review, compare, and communicate progress every six months (at minimum). Even if you only track one metric, get in the habit of recording it, attaching a dollar value where possible, and conveying that value to stakeholders. Use the Talent Progress Scorecard to review the outcomes of your succession program across a variety of indicators, including money saved, delays prevented, and improvements to existing HR processes. These indicators will help you communicate success to senior leadership, succession candidates, and the organization as a whole.

Talent progress scorecard to measure the success of your succession plan

Video Transcription

Our succession planning template available in this free download will walk you through what is required at each stage of the succession process, along with some really helpful tips to get you started. Inside you’ll find functional templates and tools to help you along every stage of your succession planning process, including measuring the maturity of your current process, determining where to focus limited resources, defining what is required for success at each role, identifying those succession candidates, building and measuring your talent bench, documenting development needs, tracking progress and identifying those really important development opportunities, and finally, measuring and communicating the success of your process which we think is really the most important part of the processes, is closing that loop. Hopefully this template helps you develop and get started on your succession planning process. If you need help getting started, take a moment to check out our “Succession Planning Launch Series” which offers a simple and cost-effective way to build a robust process and ensure your organization’s leadership is positioned for success and prepared for the unknown. Contact us to learn more about our Succession Planning Launch Series that delivers a custom succession plan in just 30 days, while requiring less than eight hours, essentially two half-day sessions, from your leadership team.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a succession planning strategy?

Succession planning itself is a strategy that works to identify and develop talent for critical roles (at any level) in an organization.  

How do you structure a succession plan?

Unlike your annual report, budget, or strategic plan, succession plans are not a document (at least, they’re not JUST a document). Succession planning is an ongoing process of leader development, so rather than a list of headers, figures, and references, the structure of a succession plan will depend on the people in your organization. That being said, there are structures you can use to establish a robust planning process. Check out SIGMA’s six-step succession planning process, or download our Succession Plan Templates or Guide.

What is a succession planning template?

A succession planning template can be either a process or a tool (or both!) As a process, a business succession plan template outlines the steps you can follow to build a strong succession plan. SIGMA uses a six-step process, which is unique because it not only helps you create a plan, but it also establishes an ongoing process of leadership development to ensure that plan is sustainable.

As a tool, a succession plan templates may consist of checklists, forms, development plans, etc. Check out SIGMA’s template library for a few examples, or download our guide, which walks you through our six-step process AND includes all the tools you’ll need along the way.

How do you create a succession plan?

There are six simple steps you can follow in order to create a robust succession planning process: 

  1. Identify Critical Roles 
  2. Draft Success Profiles 
  3. Nominate Succession Candidates 
  4. Assess Development Needs 
  5. Develop Talent  
  6. Measure Progress 

To learn more about these steps, check out SIGMA’s blog on our six-step succession planning process. You can also download our Succession Planning Guide, which walks you through each step and includes practical tools to help you implement the process.

Want to Learn More About our Succession Planning Methods?

Contact us below to speak with a consultant about how SIGMA can help you develop your leaders. We would love to hear from you!

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1 Benezet, J. (September 26, 2018). Why Succession Plans Don’t Happen. TRAINING INDUSTRY. Retrieved from https://trainingindustry.com/articles/leadership/why-succession-plans-dont-happen/#:~:text=A%20recent%20survey%20of%20over,price%20when%20underperforming%20executives%20remain..

2 Harrell, E. (December 2016). Succession Planning: What the Research Says. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/12/succession-planning-what-the-research-says.