How rigorous is your succession planning process and execution of it?

Our reader poll today asks: How rigorous is your succession planning process and execution of it?

• Extremely — we know who’s going where next and execute the plan well 5.24%
• Very — we know where most people are headed and generally execute the plan 20.95%
• Somewhat — we know where key players are going but don’t always execute 33.50%
• Not very — it’s unclear where people are headed and we don’t execute well 25.13%
• Not at all — what’s succession planning? 15.18%

Who’s next? Nobody knows! Almost 75% of you report only having a vague idea, at best, of who’s going where and when in terms of succession planning. This lack of planning is creating a lot of risks for your organization. First, in a crisis when someone leaves the organization, the lack of planning leads to delays in filling the open role. Second, a lack of succession planning creates attrition risk. If people don’t know what their career path looks like, they get anxious. They want visibility. And if they can’t get visibility with your organization, they’ll leave and get it at another one. By the way, these people craving this visibility are usually high performers who want to take their careers places. Can you afford to lose them (which then triggers the first risk I mentioned). If “people are our most important asset” then we need to act like it. Spend some time assessing trajectories, roles, growth, and expectations. Build and communicate a plan. It will keep your people around longer and it will prepare you to address inevitable departures from the organization.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.