Every leader will eventually leave their organization. It may be through retirement, the sale or transfer of a business, a family transition, a new opportunity, or simply God’s calling into the next season of life. We all know this, yet many organizations spend far more time planning for next year’s budget than they do preparing for the eventual transition of their most important leaders.
Succession planning should not begin when someone announces their retirement. By that point, you may already be behind. A well-developed succession plan gives an organization the time to prayerfully consider its future, evaluate its leadership needs, develop people, transfer critical knowledge, and make sure its mission, vision, and values remain intact through the transition.
For Christian-owned organizations that desire to leave a legacy, this is not simply good business practice. It’s good stewardship.
Succession Planning Is More Than Choosing a Successor
When many leaders hear “succession planning,” their first thought is, “Who will replace me?” Certainly, identifying future leadership is an important part of the process, but succession planning goes much deeper. Before determining who should fill a particular position, you need to determine what the organization will actually need from that position in the future.
Consider how much your organization has changed over the past 10 or 20 years. You may have more employees, additional locations, new ministries, different customers, greater regulatory requirements, or entirely new ways of doing business. The responsibilities that made sense when the current leader began may not be the responsibilities the organization needs five or 10 years from now. Simply taking an existing job description, changing the name at the top, and handing it to the next person is not succession planning.
A good succession process should examine the future organizational structure, leadership responsibilities, decision-making authority, and competencies required for success. It should also identify leadership gaps and determine what must happen to prepare the organization and its people for the transition.
Your Mission, Vision, and Values Matter
In Faith Driven HR, I spend considerable time discussing the importance of mission, vision, and values. These are not words that should simply be posted on a wall or included on your website. In a high-performing organization, they help guide how people make decisions, how employees understand priorities, and how leaders determine where the organization is going.
They are equally important during succession. Before asking who should lead the organization next, leadership needs to be clear about where the organization is going. What is our mission? What is our vision for the future? What values are non-negotiable? For a Christian organization, we should also prayerfully consider how we ensure that the organization remains Christ-centered as leadership passes from one generation to another.
Methods will change. Technology will change. Markets will change. Organizational structures will change. The next generation of leaders will undoubtedly do some things differently than the current generation. That can be healthy. The objective is not to preserve every method of the outgoing leader; it is to make sure the organization remains faithful to its mission and values while preparing for what God has planned next.
Develop Your People Before You Need Them
One of the themes throughout Faith-Driven HR is that organizations need to challenge, empower, mentor, and develop their employees. Succession planning is where those practices become especially important. If an organization waits until a key leader announces a departure before asking who might be ready to replace that person, It’s waited too long.
Take an honest look at the people within your organization. Who’s demonstrated leadership potential? Who could take on greater responsibility? What competencies do they already possess, and where are the gaps? What experiences do they need? Who should be mentoring them? These conversations should take place years before a transition, not weeks before one.
You may already have future leaders working within your organization. But mere potential does not prepare someone for leadership. People need opportunities to make decisions, manage others, participate in strategic discussions, learn from mistakes, and understand how the organization operates. Developing future leaders requires intentionality.
Don’t Allow Organizational Knowledge to Walk out the Door
Knowledge transfer is another critical component of succession planning, particularly in family businesses and founder-led organizations. A leader who has spent 20, 30, or 40 years building an organization possesses an enormous amount of information that may never have been documented.
They know the customers, employees, donors, vendors, ministry partners, and community relationships. They know why certain decisions were made. They remember what has been tried before and why it did or didn’t work. They understand the history behind policies and practices that may look very different to someone coming into the organization today.
If all that knowledge resides with one person, the organization has significant risk. Succession planning should intentionally identify critical knowledge and relationships, and develop a process for transferring them. The goal is not merely to transfer a position. It’s to transfer the knowledge, relationships, responsibilities, and organizational understanding necessary for the next leader to be successful.
Take an Honest Look at Your Organizational Structure
A leadership transition is also an excellent time to evaluate whether the current organizational structure is still the right one. As organizations grow, responsibilities that once belonged to one person may need to be divided among several leaders. Other positions may no longer be necessary, while entirely new leadership capabilities may be required.
This is where an organizational assessment and leadership gap analysis can be extremely valuable. Do you have the right positions? Are responsibilities clearly defined? Do employees understand who is accountable for what? Is too much decision-making authority concentrated with one person? Are there gaps that could become significant problems once the current leader changes?
The organization that got you where you are today may not be the organization that will take you where God is calling you tomorrow. Succession planning gives leadership an opportunity to thoughtfully evaluate those questions before simply filling a vacancy.
Governance Must Be Part of the Discussion
The organization’s governance structure also needs to support the next generation of leadership. In Faith Driven HR, I discuss the importance of selecting a governance model that fits the organization’s mission and provides appropriate guidance and accountability. This becomes especially important during a significant leadership transition.
Boards, owners, executives, family members, and other stakeholders need clarity concerning roles, responsibilities, and accountability. Unclear governance can create unnecessary conflict at precisely the time an organization needs stability. Strong governance, on the other hand, can provide continuity while allowing the new leader the authority necessary to lead.
For family businesses, succession may also involve ownership, tax, estate, and legal considerations. Those issues require coordination with qualified legal, financial, tax, and other professional advisors. But the people and organizational side of the transition cannot be overlooked while those financial and ownership issues are being addressed.
Leadership Is Stewardship
Ultimately, succession planning is about stewardship. God has entrusted leaders with people, resources, relationships, and opportunities. We should be asking not only what we can accomplish while we’re leading, but what we’re preparing for those who will follow us.
What will happen to the culture you’ve worked so hard to build? Have you developed people who can lead without you? Have you transferred the knowledge they need? Is the organization clear about its mission, vision, and values? Are the right leadership and governance structures in place? Most importantly, have you prayerfully prepared the organization for its next season?
A leadership legacy should not be measured solely by what was accomplished during a leader’s tenure. It should also be reflected in the people who were developed, the organization that was strengthened, and the foundation that was left behind for the next generation.
Develop a Succession Roadmap
At IHN HR, we work with Christian-owned companies, churches, ministries, nonprofits, and other faith-driven organizations to develop a customized Succession Roadmap and Implementation Plan. Depending on the organization’s needs, the process may include an organizational and leadership assessment, future organizational structure, identification of potential successors, leadership gap analysis, successor development, role clarification, job descriptions, mentoring, knowledge transfer, governance considerations, and a phased implementation plan.
The objective is not to produce another report that gets placed on a shelf. It’s to provide leadership with a practical roadmap that identifies what needs to happen, who needs to be involved, and how the organization can intentionally prepare for its future.
If you know a leadership transition is coming, start now. If you believe a transition is still years away, that may be an even better time to start. Succession planning takes time, and developing people takes even longer.
Are you prepared for what comes next? More importantly, is your organization?
IHN HR can help you prayerfully develop a succession plan that prepares your people, protects your mission, and positions your organization for the next generation of leadership.
We help organizations build high performance human resource programs designed to build your workplace into the productive, engaging, effective, integrity-filled space you want it to be.
Rise with us by implementing our faith driven high-performance human resource programs to help find great people! E-mail us here.
The post Succession Planning: Are You Prepared for What’s Next? appeared first on IHN HR.
