Most organisations treat succession planning as a board-level concern — identifying potential replacements for the CEO and perhaps the CFO, then filing the document away until the next board meeting. This approach is not just inadequate. In the current talent environment, it is dangerous. The loss of a critical middle manager can cause as much operational disruption as a CEO departure.

The Hidden Succession Risk

A typical mid-sized government ministry or corporation has one CEO, one CFO, and one COO at the top — and perhaps 15 to 30 critical roles at the middle management and specialist level. The board has succession plans for the top three. The other 30 critical roles are entirely unplanned for. When any one of those 30 people leaves, the organisation scrambles.

A Practical Approach to Broader Succession Planning

Step 1: Identify Critical Roles — Not Just Senior Roles

A critical role is one where vacancy would significantly disrupt operations, is difficult to fill quickly from the external market, and requires deep institutional knowledge or specialised expertise. In most organisations, this exercise reveals 20 to 40 critical roles below the executive level that have never appeared on a succession plan.

Step 2: Assess Your Pipeline

For each critical role, identify potential internal successors and categorise them by readiness: “ready now,” “ready in one to two years,” or “requires significant development.” Where you find critical roles with no plausible internal successor, you have identified a talent pipeline gap requiring immediate attention.

Step 3: Build Individual Development Plans

Potential successors need to be developed deliberately, not left to develop organically. Each identified successor should have a development plan including stretch assignments, mentoring relationships, exposure to senior stakeholders, and targeted training.

Step 4: Create Knowledge Transfer Mechanisms

Proactively identify knowledge concentration risks and create mechanisms — documented procedures, shadowing arrangements, knowledge-sharing sessions — to distribute that knowledge more broadly before a key person leaves.

“The best succession plans are not filed in a board pack and reviewed annually. They are lived daily through deliberate development, coaching, and knowledge transfer.” — Paul Mesike

Step 5: Review Quarterly

Succession plans reviewed annually are always out of date. Quarterly reviews — even brief ones — ensure the plan reflects current realities. Organisations with robust succession planning demonstrate measurably better outcomes: faster recovery from key person departures, higher engagement among high-potential employees, and lower recruitment costs.