Term: Succession Planning

What Is Succession Planning?

Succession planning is the process of identifying and developing people who can take on critical roles and responsibilities in the future as an organization grows, changes, or loses key employees.

It helps leaders prepare for the future by understanding which roles are critical to the business, what capabilities those roles require, and which people can be developed to fill those needs.

Why Is Succession Planning Important?

Effective succession planning helps organizations:

• Prepare future leaders and key-role successors
• Reduce disruption when critical employees leave
• Identify development needs before a role becomes vacant
• Retain valuable knowledge and capabilities
• Create opportunities for internal growth
• Strengthen the organization’s future talent pipeline
• Align future talent needs with business strategy

What Does Succession Planning Include?

A succession planning process can include:

• Critical Role Identification – Identifying the roles that are essential to achieving the organization’s future vision.
• Talent Assessment – Understanding employees’ performance, potential, capabilities, behaviors, and development needs.
• Readiness Assessment – Determining who may be ready for greater responsibility and what additional development is required.
• Development Planning – Creating specific actions and experiences to prepare employees for future roles.
• Future Talent Needs – Identifying the people and capabilities the organization will need as its strategy and structure evolve.
• Ongoing Review – Revisiting succession needs as business priorities, roles, and employees change.

Succession Planning and Behavioral Science

Succession decisions should consider more than current performance. Understanding how people naturally behave, communicate, think, make decisions, and respond to different situations can provide additional insight into their readiness for future responsibilities.

MyTalentPlanner’s behavioral science approach uses multiple forms of assessment to understand different dimensions of people, including natural behavioral style, driving forces, soft skills, and emotional intelligence. These insights can support talent decisions, leadership development, team development, and succession planning.

MyTalentPlanner incorporates behavioral science into its broader talent-planning approach, helping leaders use these insights alongside performance, development, role requirements, and other talent information rather than relying on a single assessment or framework.

Succession Planning at MyTalentPlanner

At MyTalentPlanner, succession planning is connected to the organization’s future talent needs and strategic vision.

The Talent Planning process asks leaders to consider which roles are critical to future success, what skills are missing, how team members should be developed, who may need to be retained or promoted, and what succession plans need to be established.

MyTalentPlanner brings these considerations together with Talent Plans, organizational structure, employee development plans, performance plans, behavioral insights, and talent assessments to give leaders a broader view when preparing people for future roles.

Succession Planning for SMBs

For small and midsize businesses, succession planning is particularly important because a single key-person departure can affect operations, customer relationships, productivity, and growth.

A proactive approach helps leaders develop internal talent before a critical need arises, while keeping succession decisions connected to the organization’s long-term vision and talent plan.