plan-team-succession

Plan Team Succession

Identify which roles on your team are critical, assess each team member's readiness and potential, and create development plans that make the team resilient when a key person leaves, is promoted, or becomes unavailable.

Why This Is Best Practice

Adopted by: McKinsey's "War for Talent" research (1997, updated 2023) identified succession planning as a core differentiator between talent-strong and talent-weak organizations; the 9-box grid (performance vs. potential) is the most widely used succession tool, used at GE (where it originated), IBM, Unilever, and the majority of Fortune 500 companies for annual talent reviews; SHRM identifies succession planning as a foundational HR competency in the SPHR body of knowledge Impact: The Corporate Leadership Council (2005, 29,000 employees) found that organizations with formal succession plans fill critical roles 20% faster and with 20% better performance ratings than those without; McKinsey (2023) found that companies with deep internal talent pipelines promote internally 60% more often and experience 30% lower executive turnover; the cost of an unplanned departure from a critical role averages 50–200% of the role's annual salary (SHRM replacement cost studies) Why best: Waiting until a key person departs to begin succession planning leaves the organization in crisis mode — decisions are rushed, the wrong person is promoted before they're ready, or an expensive external search begins under time pressure; planned succession identifies the gap years before it opens and creates the development experiences to close it

Sources: SHRM "Succession Planning" knowledge center (shrm.org); McKinsey "Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets" (2023); Corporate Leadership Council "Building the High-Performance Workforce" (2005); Groysberg et al., Harvard Business Review (March 2011)

Steps

1. Identify critical roles on your team

A role is critical when:

• The skills required are rare or take 12+ months to develop in a new person
• The role holds key relationships (customers, partners, senior stakeholders) that do not automatically transfer to a new person
• A vacancy in the role would materially delay a key deliverable or strategic initiative
• The role sits at a single point of failure — no one else can cover it in the short term

List all roles on the team. Mark each as: Critical, Important, or Standard. Focus succession planning energy on Critical roles.

2. Assess each team member on two axes

Use the 9-box grid: Performance (x-axis) vs. Potential (y-axis), each rated High/Medium/Low.

Performance: based on recent demonstrated output — not personality, not potential, not years of tenure. Use evidence from the last 12 months.

Potential: the combination of:

• Learning agility — how quickly do they develop new skills when needed?
• Aspiration — do they want to grow into larger scope?
• Capacity — could they handle significantly more responsibility?

9-Box placement:
           Low Perf | Med Perf | High Perf
High Pot:  [Risk]   | [Growth] | [Star]
Med Pot:   [Issue]  | [Core]   | [Contributor]
Low Pot:   [Below]  | [Steady] | [Expert]

Do not share box placement with employees — use it as a management planning tool, not as a label applied to people.

3. Identify succession candidates for each critical role

For each critical role, identify:

• Ready now: could step into this role within 90 days with minimal ramp
• Ready in 1–2 years: would need specific development experiences to be ready
• Ready in 3+ years: high potential but early in their development arc

Most critical roles should have at least one "ready in 1–2 years" candidate. If no candidate exists for a critical role, document the risk and create a development plan or external pipeline.

4. Create development actions for each succession candidate

A succession plan without development actions is a list of names, not a plan. For each succession candidate, identify 1–3 development actions that close the gap between their current capability and the target role:

Development action	Example	Timeline
Stretch assignment	Lead a cross-functional project in the target role's scope	6 months
Exposure	Shadow the current role-holder in leadership forums	Quarterly
Skill development	Manage a P&L for the first time	Next fiscal year
Mentorship	Assign a mentor who has done the target role	Ongoing

These actions integrate with the employee's career development plan (see run-career-conversation) — succession planning is most effective when the employee's own aspirations align with the organizational need.

5. Conduct a quarterly talent review

Review the succession plan quarterly, not annually. Business conditions, people's development trajectories, and critical role definitions all change faster than annual cycles.

Quarterly talent review agenda (60–90 minutes):

1. Critical role status: has any critical role vacancy risk increased?
2. 9-box updates: has anyone's performance or potential assessment changed?
3. Development action progress: are succession candidates completing their planned experiences?
4. Risk flags: who is a flight risk? Who has stalled? Who is accelerating faster than expected?

In larger organizations, this review is conducted with HR and the manager's manager. At team level, a manager can run a simplified version independently.

6. Manage succession risk without creating anxiety

Do not tell employees they are (or are not) on a succession list. Do not label them with their 9-box placement. Do:

• Give succession candidates stretch assignments and development experiences (this is motivating even without the "succession" label)
• Conduct career conversations (see run-career-conversation) to understand whether their aspirations align with the succession need
• Build redundancy for critical roles: ensure at least two people know how to do each critical function

If a succession candidate explicitly says they want a particular role, the conversation can become explicit. Otherwise, develop without labeling.

Rules

• A succession plan without development actions is a list, not a plan — every critical role with no internal candidate must have either a development plan or an external pipeline strategy
• Review quarterly, not annually — talent assessments more than 12 months old are unreliable; people develop faster than annual cycles capture
• Keep 9-box placements confidential — labeling people to their face with a box placement creates defensiveness and reductiveness; use it as an internal planning tool only
• Align succession with individual aspiration — succession planning that ignores what employees want produces development plans that employees don't pursue

Common Mistakes

• Succession planning only at executive level: the most expensive and disruptive vacancies often occur at mid-level critical roles — technical leads, key account managers, specialized contributors — not just executives.
• Identifying successors without creating development experiences: a succession list where no one is actively being developed is a document with no operational impact; the value is in the development actions.
• Equating tenure with succession readiness: years in a role predict familiarity, not readiness for the next level; assess performance and potential, not time served.
• Treating succession planning as a one-time annual exercise: a plan built in January is meaningless if a key person announces departure in October; quarterly review is the minimum cadence for it to provide real business continuity.
• Building a plan without involving HR: succession decisions intersect with compensation, legal equity, and organizational development; HR must be involved, especially for formal talent review processes.

When NOT to Use

• For teams of 3 or fewer people — the overhead of a formal succession plan is not warranted; focus on cross-training and documentation instead.
• In organizations with a defined HR-led succession process — align to that process rather than running a parallel one; duplication creates inconsistency.