Succession plan
A succession plan is the documented set of candidates, readiness assessments, and development actions for covering a specific critical role.
A succession plan is the working document for a single critical role: who the candidates are, how ready each one is, where the gaps lie, and what development would close them. Together, the plans across an organization form its overall succession strategy.
A plan is only useful if it stays current. Treating succession as a living view that updates as people grow and move — rather than a slide deck refreshed once a year — is what separates real readiness from a paper exercise.
A complete plan for one role contains: the role's success profile (weighted, observable criteria), the candidate slate scored against that profile with dated evidence, a readiness window per candidate, development actions with owners and deadlines, and a named owner for the plan itself. Remove any one of those and a predictable failure mode appears in its place.
Plans also need provenance. When a readiness call changes from one year to Ready Now, someone will eventually ask who changed it and on what evidence; a plan that can answer survives scrutiny, and a plan that cannot gets quietly replaced by hallway judgment.
Frequently asked questions
- What should a succession plan include?
- Five things: the role's success profile (weighted, observable criteria), a candidate slate scored against that profile with dated evidence, a readiness window for each candidate, development actions with owners and deadlines, and a named owner for the plan itself. Remove any one and a predictable failure appears — plans without development actions describe the bench without building it; plans without owners go stale.
- How many successors should a critical role have?
- Two to three credible candidates spread across readiness windows is a healthy bench for most roles. A single successor is fragile — the same strong person often backstops several seats, so one resignation can expose three plans at once. More than three usually means the slate has not been honestly narrowed.
- How often should a succession plan be updated?
- Whenever the facts change — a score, a departure, a new hire — and at minimum at every talent review. The failure mode to avoid is the annual slide deck: a plan refreshed once a year tends to describe an organization that no longer exists by the time someone actually leaves. Treating the plan as a living view rather than a document is what keeps readiness real.
- What is the difference between a succession plan and replacement planning?
- Replacement planning names emergency stand-ins — who covers the role next Monday if the seat suddenly empties. A succession plan goes further: it scores candidates against the role's requirements, assigns readiness windows, and runs development to close specific gaps. Replacement planning answers a continuity question; succession planning builds the people who make the question easy.
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