Do you have a plan for your leadership team in the event that a key person leaves for another opportunity? Or retires suddenly? Or gets hit by the proverbial bus? Or suffers a debilitating health issue that makes it impossible to continue to work? M&A can help you with your succession planning.
These are all real possibilities that could derail your business.
Smart companies have a well-established succession plan for every key manager and supervisor role in their company. Here are two key steps that M&A Executive Search recommends to ensure your company is prepared for any unfortunate event that causes a loss of a key employee.
STEP 1: Assess Your Talent
Hire and identify high-potential employees who have the intellectual capital and emotional IQ – the intelligence to continually learn, take on new challenges and responsibilities as they develop in the organization. Develop a workforce plan that identifies gaps in capabilities and needs of the organization. Then develop a plan to recruit the candidates with the right skills and abilities to meet those needs. Having a feeder system of potential leaders being continually developed should be part of the overall company plan.
M&A Executive Search can help your company leadership team assess your talent and identify the talent gap. We do this by asking the right questions, uncovering areas of concern and assessing your company culture to ensure the talent is in place to meet the growing needs and challenges your company is facing and will face in the future.
STEP 2: Find the Talent that is Missing
Once a strategic hiring plan is developed to cover the gaps in leadership needs and skills – M&A Executive Search can help you find the talent that is missing. Engage the team in asking the critical questions of how the candidates get things done and how they empower the team. Find out about their team-building skills and their ability to be a team player (do they share information?) Do they give credit to others? Do they build the team up? How do they do it? Asking the right behavioral questions will give you clues to finding the right fit for your organization.
Other Ways M&A Executive Search Can Help You Design a Succession Plan:
- Ensure every leadership position has a back-up person or two that could handle the role.
- Assign an executive coach to help integrate newly hired executive into the organization and ensure their communication style and skill meets the organizations’ expectations.
- Provide feedback often and directly to the employees and keep them engaged in the solutions and problem-solving sessions.
- Reward and celebrate successes the team has and make sure credit is shared among the team members—not just the leader. This will build team morale, increase engagement and provide opportunity for rising stars to shine and be rewarded with greater roles of responsibility.
The key is to hire great employees and then help them prosper in your organization. Identifying the candidates with the right stuff is just the start – then you have to integrate and develop that talent in your organization with the right mentoring, developing and career opportunities.
Does your company have a succession plan in place that can quickly react to sudden and unforeseen departures in your leadership team? Talk to M&A Executive Search to make sure your succession plan will identify the right leaders at exactly the right time.
