Three questions to help unravel the secrets of succession

Succession – a cracking TV series rumoured to be based on the Murdoch empire. Dog eat dog. A race for power. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. Which brings me to this month’s soft skills topic – succession planning. Despite the travails of the Roy family, most companies don’t have a succession plan. And why should they? With Covid, cost price increases and a conflict in the east, there are other priorities. Yes, and there always will be.

I’m not here to tell you to write a succession plan. My task is to make it easier for you. Starting with three simple questions that will get the snowball rolling down the hill. Let’s start at the top of the company: the board. The first question is, ‘Who might leave/move on/be promoted?’ Let’s use pop culture as an example:

• Who is likely to leave the board level in the next six months? Ginger Spice.
• Who is likely to leave the director level in the next six months? Sporty Spice.
• Who is likely to leave the senior management level in the next six months? Scary Spice.

Then comes the second question: ‘Who could take their place?’

• Who can take Ginger’s place? Paul.
• Who can take Sporty’s place? Ringo.
• Who can take Scary’s place? George.

Question three: What gaps in behaviours/skills do the succeeding people have?

• Paul needs to know how to dance like Ginger.
• Ringo needs to play a sport like Sporty.
• George needs self-confidence like Scary.

No Excel, no template and no big plan. An A4 sheet of paper. Your succession plan has begun. Then repeat the three questions every quarter, ensuring that the gaps in behaviours and skills are being addressed by the successors with a simple personal development plan.

At Sainsbury’s we had a cheese grader, Clive. A lovely old guy who knew things about cheese that would compete with Wikipedia. He retired. On the day he did, after 40 years of cheese-ing, people attended a sampling session with him to ‘get his knowledge’. They didn’t.

That is not good succession planning. The best way to ‘hoover up’ Clive’s knowledge would have been by learning a piece each week over time – a bit like learning to drive. Better planning would have seen his critical knowledge retained.