When it comes to replacing the chief executive, every company knows it needs to make a plan, even if it doesn't have one yet. But what about succession planning for other key leaders and roles? More than one cohort of the NCEO’s CEO network dug into this topic last month. Rather than try to cover succession planning comprehensively, this blog post shares some of the thought-provoking ideas from those discussions.

Below is a collection of just some of the insights shared in this networking group. These comments are not quotes—they have been edited and often combined with other comments to ensure anonymity and coherence.

• It's a requirement for everyone on the management team to have an explicitly named successor and for that successor to be fully aware and ready to take over in the short term. If any managers do not have a successor, I ask them how they can really be on vacation. This also invites conversations on how we will develop our people's leadership potential if they can’t see a path to their career growth.
• If you give people permission to push themselves by volunteering for leadership training, you might be surprised by who steps up. We offered everyone on staff a chance to opt-in to a broad management development program as long as they met expectations for being a fully active participant. We found that making the training program something that anyone could do on their own volition was a great way to find leadership potential in a broader pool of people than we expected. I like knowing that we’ve got a path to advancement that isn’t vulnerable to leadership promoting the people with whom they feel the most affinity.
• When it comes to filling a gap in our executive team, we know the impact will have ripple effects among staff. Recently, we've been trying to also think about what role, if any, the board can play in smoothing these transitions. In the case of a CEO transition, we believe it's necessary to expand the number of outside directors several years in advance. We are also looking at recruiting board candidates to address particular skills that may support the transition of a different executive.
• Leaders have an impulse to manage risks, and one way we found ourselves doing that over the years was by building in long overlaps between a departing leader and their successor. Over time, we realized that approach has some unintended side-effects, like implying less than full trust in the successor. Sometimes it also created a difficult period for two leaders in which it was not clear who was deciding what.
• We approached succession systematically by evaluating every position at the company on a number of criteria, like our ability to replace the person currently in the role, how soon they might leave, their uniqueness, etc.
• The best way to be confident about your company’s ability to fill executive turnover is to have a solid cohort of managers, and our company makes sure we have those managers by having a strong path into the ranks of supervisors and middle managers. That might be a company-wide brown-bag learning program, generous tuition reimbursement, an aspect of the staff review process, or a network of work groups to solve specific business problems.

We are inviting interested NCEO members to join our 2024 CEO cohorts. Space is limited and open to active NCEO members. Visit the 2024 CEO cohort page to learn more. 

To learn more about the ins and outs of leadership succession, see our book Leadership Development and Succession.