For the past few weeks, I've been polling my personal followers and asking them questions about succession planning.
Then, the following day I give the answer.
This article is an abbreviated compilation of those polls and responses.

One of the top questions I get from clients is: When do you start preparing future leaders?

When someone is getting ready to move “up” or “out” is the typically the time when thoughts turn to succession planning. People start thinking, “Who should replace me?,” which is years too late.

The situation that we encounter a lot when companies call us with succession planning needs is that there is generally a key person who is ready to retire (or already did!) and there's no one in the organization to replace them. If you've got a chosen few that lead the organization and no one else in a leadership pipeline, I hate to tell you this, but you have a crisis situation.

Let's look at it this way: If you had a deadline to get married, say by age 40, but you waited until you were 39 to start dating - what is the likelihood of meeting your deadline? What are the chances that you'd choose someone who was not ideal just so you could make the deadline? Waiting too long begets rushed, decisions under pressure which are rarely the best, wouldn't you agree?

You don't want to have to simply “choose” someone -  you want to “love” the person you've chosen.

Answer: The answer is on day one, ASAP, the minute they walk in the door. You want to constantly be preparing folks to move up in their careers so that your transitions occur in a planned, logical, purposeful manner.

Get everyone prepared to be a future leader. Those who enjoy it and excel at it will rise to leadership positions and those who don't enjoy it will, at the very least, be a lot more knowledgeable and able to contribute more to your organization. You can't go wrong if everybody has the ability to make good decisions, to communicate well, to collaborate with others, to be a problem solver, etc.

Another frequent question we get is: How should we pick future leaders?

In a workshop I recently conducted with small business owners, this topic came up organically in the group when one of the attendees said, “I would hire somebody for their leadership aptitude out of the gate. I can teach them to do the work. I would have had a hard time teaching them to be a leader.”

It's an interesting perspective, and I don't necessarily disagree with it, but... I will argue it for the sake of argument because our company philosophy is: Leadership From Day One. In keeping with that philosophy, I say: let's give everyone leadership skills and capabilities the minute they walk in the door. As soon as you hire them, they should be in a rotation of developing communication skills, problem-solving, critical thinking, working collaboratively, understanding finance or how the business makes money, how much money the business keeps, who your competitors are, the list goes on and on!  If you start developing skills early in someone's career, I think more people are going to show leadership “aptitude.”

So, let's assume everyone has the aptitude and it’s up to us to grow it. And then from there we'll decide, or they will decide if they want to be a leader or not.

The final question for today is: When do you start communicating a leadership transition?

This is a question that comes up a lot because, for some reason, many organizations and their leaders think succession planning is a top-secret mission. But not communicating your transition plans makes people nervous for their futures.

You, as the CEO or the owner of the company, are planning your own future (retirement or exit), right? And you're planning for the future of the company - how you want it to continue to thrive when you are gone, yes? Well, directly or indirectly you're also planning your employees’ futures. I don't think enough C-Suite leaders recognize that people are watching you and wondering what's happening “up there” in the C-suite?

Here's a perfect example of what happens when you don't communicate your succession/transition plans:

This past year we began working with a five-person C-suite team to plan for the retirements of their CEO and COO. Starting at meeting number two, I kept suggesting that they needed to let their staff know why we were coming to their offices and going behind closed doors. I advised the team that the staff was probably becoming concerned and that what we were doing was not nefarious and didn't have to be covert.

I suggested a simple video message from the CEO or an e-mail that said, “Hey you probably have seen this team coming in regularly. We're planning for the future of the organization. We're planning for when we are ready to retire. What next leaders do you think should be in the pipeline, so that this company continues to be successful?” Unfortunately, they didn't heed our advice. The CEO said something along the lines of, “I know my people, they're not concerned.” And then, about three months into our work, one of their key division leaders left.

It was a gut punch, not only to the CEO, but to the operations of the company.

If you have a smaller company (under 1000 employees,) in which divisions are run by one key leader and you don't have any backup plans because you haven't started succession planning yet, you are not only vulnerable to losing a key person, you're vulnerable to affecting the company financially precisely because of losing a key person. If you treat succession planning like standard operating procedure, there's nothing to be nervous about because employees see, that from day one, you have planned for the ongoing success of the organization.

If you'd like to learn more about how to make succession planning standard operating procedure, drop a note in the comments and we can have a quick phone call or take a look at this blog post that talks about how to institute succession planning as an SOP.

Succession planning isn't just a task you turn your attention not when you’re ready to move up the ladder or retire (if you’re the leader of the company) —it should be an integral part of how your organization operates every day. Start early, communicate openly, and create a culture where leadership readiness is woven into the fabric of your business.

Cheers!