Leaders and succession

Do you have a succession plan?  Have you chosen someone to replace you?  Have you had them trained up so they could step into your shoes tomorrow?
If not then maybe today is the day to start pulling a plan together.

Take a look at the roles within your team and categorise them, as critical or normal. You can easily judge this if you consider what the disruption would be if they left the team abruptly. Would it be a case of just filling a head? Perhaps hiring a temp while waiting for the usual process to recruit a new team member.  If this is not the case and the team would struggle without this person then you need to mark them as critical.

Now we have sorted the team members out, we need to evaluate, who might be capable to upgrade their skills with some coaching to take over the role. This is worth taking some time over to get the best fit you can.

What is the probable cost to conduct some upgrade training to each of these people, be sure to include their loss of productivity in addition to the obvious things such as travel and course fees if they apply.

Next look at the cost in lost productivity to the team if one of the current critical member left.  This will produce a delta  of the lost cost versus the upgrade costs. this is the cost we must bear to ensure our productivity remains high and our customers are provided with a constant good level of service.

By having a succession plan in place we can ensure our team will be minimally impacted if any member was to up and leave. The team will be comforted that there are people ready to take over and provide the necessary ongoing stewardship to our team.