Plan Your Succession Today
Learn why It's in every manager's responsibility and interest to plan for their succession.
Today we're going to talk about succession planning and why I think it is a crucial responsibility of any leader.
It surprises me how often Engineering Leaders wait until too late to identify and groom their potential successor. More often than not, this process starts when they find a new opportunity, either within their current organization or elsewhere.
I believe that by then, you should already have a strong candidate you've been working with and preparing for this opportunity.
That means you need to start a lot earlier.
I like to say that if you are covering a leadership position, you should start working on your succession plan from day one. I don’t mean that literally, but more to indicate the importance of starting early.
Way earlier than most people do.
Talking about realistic timelines, I think it's reasonable to start working on this plan about 6 months into a new role. After 6 months, you will have a good overview of the company, organization, and the people who work with you. You can make informed decisions.
Considering the typical 2-3 years average tenure in technology1, this will leave you plenty of time to prepare the ideal successor — or successors — without rushing steps.
Is this even my responsibility?
Some of you might wonder if this should be part of your responsibilities. You don't usually get to choose who will take your role, as that responsibility typically sits with your manager. That being true, you're uniquely positioned to significantly influence your manager's decision, and I argue that's in your interest.
As I'm a strong proponent of taking responsibility for things in your interest, working on your succession plan falls into this category.
That's why, in the last 4 jobs that I left, the person I had identified as my successor a long time before moving on ended up taking the role.
Things didn't work out as well as hoped for the first time, and this experience informed my approach in the following 3 cases, all of which I consider very successful transitions.
Why would I want to put my energy into this?
From my experience practicing deliberate succession planning multiple times, I have observed a broad set of benefits that come with this approach. I will group them into five main categories. They are presented in no particular order.
#1 Ensure continuity with the directions you set
Chances are you've spent a lot of time defining a vision and a strategy for your team, especially if you're a large organization's CTO or VP of Engineering. Assuming you did an excellent job with it, it will be in everybody's interest to continue roughly in the same direction, avoiding disruptions within the team from the always looming Not Invented Here syndrome2.
As I wrote in a previous article3, if the bus factor of your tech vision is 1, chances are that there will be a lot of changes and adjustments after you leave, and many of them will cause a lot of waste.
Working early on with a successor will ensure you're not the only one carrying the torch. Though you two might not agree on every detail, by working together on it, you and your second in command will be strongly aligned on the key strategic directions for the company.
As such, they will be the best person to carry the work on with minimum disruptions once you've departed.
#2 Contribute to your long-term reputation as a professional
Related to the first one is the impact this will have on your reputation as a professional. Think about it in the following terms.
Would you rather work with someone who runs away suddenly, leaving behind a mess you'll need to clean up, or someone who leaves the place better than they found it so that you don't have to step into pick up the pieces yourself?
Leaving a company or a team with a smooth transition and leaving behind a well-functioning organization in capable hands will contribute to your professional reputation.
People who work with you will associate you with dependability, reliability, and responsibility. This is true for both your managers and the people reporting to you.
They will want to work with you again in the future, and they'll recommend your services to people they know.
#3 Allow you to move up faster
Both you and a colleague might be working towards a promotion, let's say, from Senior Engineering Manager to Director of Engineering.
Your colleague has been working with one of their Engineering Managers for months, gradually giving them more responsibilities and visibility across the organization. That engineering manager, in turn, has been doing the same with one of the senior engineers on their team.
You think none of your EMs is ready to take your role and have never addressed the topic with them. They also seem to lack the time needed to step up as they are very busy running their teams.
Assuming you and your colleague have similar skills and experience, who do you think your managers will first consider being promoted to Director when a vacancy arises?
They'll probably go with your colleague because their organization is ready to handle the transition with limited disruption.
On the contrary, you might need to hire externally and double-hat for a non-trivial amount of time, negatively impacting your ability to step up reasonably. Picking you will represent a higher risk for disruption, and most managers will prefer to avoid that if possible.
#4 Accelerates people's growth
The best way for people to learn new skills is to practice tractable and challenging things and receive feedback on their practice. This is at the core of the idea of deliberate practice.
Once you have identified your successor, you want them to regularly practice being you. Not you as a person, but you as a role.
As you gradually increase the responsibilities you delegate to them while offering feedback, you'll significantly accelerate their growth trajectory.
By the day they take on the role permanently, they will rely on a solid foundation of first-hand experience dealing with many aspects of it.
These free trial periods are also an excellent way to assess whether they are doing a good job, identify gaps in their knowledge, skills, and behaviors, and address them promptly.
#5 Free up your busy schedule
Last, grooming a successor is a practical investment in freeing up some of your time.
Granted, you'll first need to invest time and energy working closely with the person, mentoring them, and offering feedback. But as they get in a position to take on more and more responsibilities, you'll be able to delegate bigger chunks of work to them.
I'm referring to effective and responsible delegation here; I'm not inviting you to mindlessly dump your responsibilities on them.
Remember that you'll be accountable for the work done, regardless of whether you did it yourself or delegated to someone else.
For example, a good approach can be to review the work before it's released to the broader organization if it's a document or a presentation that needs to be delivered.
You can use tools like delegation poker and the board from the Management 3.0 toolkit4 to set clear expectations.
Some things to keep in mind
Not all these benefits will materialize in every situation, but most will.
In some cases, people won't care too much about you leaving behind a well-functioning organization, and that's fine.
In other cases, your departure will coincide with other major organizational changes leading to significant strategy adjustments, which is also fine.
In some frustrating cases, you will work with a specific person for months to see them leave the organization before the opportunity materializes for them to take your role. That is also fine. Annoying but fine.
You can't predict the future and you can't force people to stay against their will. Move on and start working with the next candidate.
With that said, here are some final tips on increasing the chances of success for your succession plan.
Ensure the person is genuinely interested in your role, and respect their decision. Do not just implicitly assume they will be interested in taking your role. If you think that Alice in your team would be perfect for the role, discuss this topic in a conversation with her. Give her time to think about it, and if she decides that she's not interested, respect her decision and look for alternatives.
Make your intention explicit with your manager and the team. You want your manager to be aligned with the decision, so keep them in the loop. There is no point in keeping this intention from the team, especially if you want to delegate more responsibilities to one of its members. I like to nominate the person as my second in command. It clarifies that they are in charge when I'm not around, temporarily because I'm on holiday or permanently because I've moved on to something else.
The person can be outside of your organization. You might be in a situation where you don't see any candidate ready for internal promotion, or nobody is interested. While you keep working with people in your team to help them grow, I recommend you start looking outside as early as possible. Leverage your network, identify people who have the potential, and entertain a relationship with them.
Discuss it regularly with your team's managers to keep it top of mind. If you manage managers in your team, you should periodically remind them of their responsibility. You want them to work proactively towards their succession, which will only happen if you regularly discuss and assess progress.
Go find your successor and set them up for success!
If you already have a succession plan in place, great! This article will remind you of the importance of investing early on in this area.
You know what you need to do if you don't have one.
The saying goes, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best moment is now”.
Start doing this now, and put a reminder in your calendar six months into the future to reflect on this initiative's progress and impact.
See you all next week!
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That is good advice, Sergio. Growth, continuity, and long-term thinking is a great receipe.