11th August 2016
Expert advice from Goodson Thomas: Why succession planning is vital for future success
Expert advice from Sian Goodson, MD and founder of Cardiff and London based executive search business Goodson Thomas.
Why succession planning is vital for future success
Whether your organisation is large or small, business continuity is vital, because no matter how secure your future seems unexpected events can and do occur. That’s why succession planning is so important.
According to a survey by Barclays last year, only 49 per cent of UK small businesses have a succession plan in place. In some respects this is understandable; owners have to focus on the day-to-day demands of running a small business and may not have the capacity to plan for the longer term.
But the lack of a plan can put the future success of a business at risk. This is especially true in the life sciences sector where the loss of specialist skills or expertise could be a serious and potentially costly loss.
I am a huge advocate of early succession planning and ensuring that people’s talents are maximised in a way that benefits both them and the business. In fact I am so keen on organisations developing talent that one of the first things I do when given a new recruitment assignment is to look at the quality of internal candidates.
I carry out a mapping exercise to investigate the quality available within the organisation to provide an objective view. It might be that the ‘higher-ups’ have not considered a potential internal candidate – often until an opportunity arises they simply do not see the person in that light.
But often succession planning has not been as rigorous as it should be.
With the growing skills gap and the fact that today’s employees are less loyal than ever before, the internal talent ‘pipeline’ has never been so important.
In particular, I believe businesses should be developing millennials as leaders as early as possible in their careers. They should have systems in place to spot potential leadership talent and to nurture it at every step on the career ladder.
If a change of senior leadership is a long way off, businesses should look for other areas in which to give millennials leadership responsibility, such as setting strategies or running one-off (but important) projects.
If they don’t become more proactive in this respect, they risk losing potentially vital future assets.
But it’s not just leadership for which succession planning is important; there are many key roles that businesses and other organisations would find difficult and time-consuming to replace. That’s why succession planning should be comprehensive and cover a variety of roles and functions.
Organisations should draw up a list of their key job roles – those that need to be filled for the business to operate at peak efficiency – and the skills that are needed to fulfil them. They should then map out what talent is available internally and how they can develop and upskill individuals to be able to step up to those roles should the need arise.
In this case the old adage has never been truer – by failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.
Sian Goodson has appointed chairs, non executive directors, CEOs and other senior management roles across a range of industries including life sciences, environment, health, manufacturing, housing, education, sport, heritage and professional services.