Particularly when you start your business from scratch, you have been through a lot of difficulties to ensure the survival of your business. As an owner, you seemed to be involved in everything, no matter how small, to make sure the business took off (yes, at times even janitorial work). Now that you've made it and your business is running well, you may well still be heavily involved. If you feel exhausted and that you cannot take a break or else everything will fall apart, you may start thinking about delegation and succession planning.

BizWings shares this pain. They are currently in the process of their own succession planning and would like to share their thoughts and experiences during the process. Thus, this is by no means a model case study to be followed.

Crystal Clear Roles and Responsibilities

“When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.” BizWings found this phrase to be more than accurate. This can go either way: people may feel they they can step into other people's areas of responsibility; or they may feel succession planning is not their role. Regardless, the result is that no one takes action.

The first step BizWings took, which takes a lot of time and consideration among top management, was to come up with a clear accountability chart. This entails listing all the major ongoing projects in the firm and to create a clear and simplified organisation chart. The rules to apply here are that:

• One seat cannot be filled by more than one person
• One person can fill more than one seat if necessary

During this process, what they found was that:

• They have a lot of work that they cannot categorise, such as tasks which occur only once in a while. Someone in the company may be currently undertaking a task, but this is not his/her main role. This exercise forces us to be clear to create structure around those tasks.
• The need to identify the responsible leaders. This is natural, especially when your business is still small, but once it starts sizing up, this becomes a more complex issue.
• They have a clearer view on how they fail to recognise everyone’s contribution. In relation to the first point, there are a lot of efforts being made that were not recognised and rewarded.

Therefore, BizWings feel that making roles and responsibilities, as well as the organisation chart, as clear as possible is a crucial process and a very important first step towards a good succession plan.

Evaluate Your People

The second step BizWings took was to assess how well each candidate 'fits' each position. When thinking about this 'fit', they mean both their mentally and capability. They want as much as possible to ensure people like their seats, and that they will succeed in them. Clear roles and responsibilities will clarity on what work needs to be done, and what kind of person is needed for that role. First, they evaluate their personnel among the management teams. They used EOS Worldwide’s GWC framework and found immense value from it. They then discussed with their staff in annual one-to-one discussions to let them have a say in their assigned responsibilities too.

In using the GWC framework to determine if someone is a good fit within a position, they ask 3 questions: Get it? Want it? and Capacity?

• 'Get it' means understanding the requirements of a role, and how this role fits into the company’s overall operation.
• 'Want it' means the person wants to be in the role. He/she is motivated to take on this work. He/she sees the value of the work and is willing to contribute to the work with full enthusiasm and effort.
• 'Capacity' means the person has the skills and knowledge to do the work. In this case, if the person does not readily have the required skills, you may consider a development plan for the individual.

This exercise helps to make sure you have the right person in the right seat for the current work, however the succession planning must take one further step.

Succession Planning

For succession planning, making sure that you have the right people in the right seat may not be adequate: you have to plan for the future as well. These are the steps BizWing are currently taking, and this is intended to be an ongoing exercise.

First, they revisit their organization chart to see the positions that will need a successor in three years’ time. This may be due to a number of reasons, such as the retirement of key individuals, the overload of a particular person, etc. They only do a three year succession plan, as they found this to be a good amount of time to develop an individual's capability to fill a position, but not too long that the succession timeline becomes merely a distant concept.

Then they look within the company. Below this person, is there anyone who may “Get it”, “Want it” and have the “Capacity” in three years’ time or not. They also look across different units within the company for the candidate search. If they can identify potential candidates, they will talk to them to share the management plan on the candidacy, without making any promise or guarantee of the position. They will also ask for his/her thoughts to ensure willingness and full engagement in the development plan.

However, in the case that they cannot find a potential candidate internally, the management team decide to do one of the following things:

• Revise the roles to be filled. Is there anything we can do to reorganise the work so that we can find a good fit? For example, if the position requires excellence in both marketing and operations to succeed, can we manage by having two people collaborate instead?
• Look for candidates on the market. Even though it may not make economic sense to hire immediately, it is important to leave at least one full year before any planned succession for a new hire. The individual needs time to be onboarded with the company, to build his/her own skills and knowledge, and to build his/her social capital among their team. This shall then ensure more successful hiring to fill the position.

Development Plan

The last step is to create a development plan, which will require the support of your internal Human Resources team. This plan should be detailed and clearly break down targets year year-by-year. The development progress will then be examined in bi-annual one-to-one discussions with the team lead. Time will be dedicated to discussing and evaluating how ready the individual is for increased responsibilities. The development plan may be adjusted during each one-to-one and is to be followed up on by the Human Resources team.

Conclusion

Succession planning may be a nerve-wracking process for a lot of business owners and lead to concerns that things will fall apart if they reduce their own involvement. Therefore, a good and carefully crafted succession plan may be of great help to relieve such worries and bring peace of mind to the management team. Ensuring clear roles and responsibilities across the organisation, evaluating the fit of the current cohort, planning for future succession, and coming up with a clear development plan are the four key steps BizWings take to tackle succession planning within their firm. They sincerely hope that these steps may also be useful for any company considering their own succession plan.