Succession planning anticipates the departure of a leader or leaders, whether at some point in the distant future or over the next few months, and engages the organization in a planning process that ensures an orderly transition of leadership.

Most succession planning can be categorized as follows:

Strategic leadership development - an organizational commitment to ensuring that the right staff and the right volunteers are in place (with the essential skill-sets) to successfully advance the organization?s vision and be ready for any opportunity or eventuality. So rather than planning in anticipation of a specific leadership departure, ?strategic leadership development? focuses on identifying the leadership and managerial skills your organization needs now and in the future and maintaining talented individuals who have or who can develop those skills.

Emergency succession planning - the organization is putting in place plans and defining roles and responsibilities in order to ensure that the organization can continue to operate without disruption in the event of a sudden, unplanned absence or the departure of a key leader or administrator.

Departure-defined succession planning - a leader announces that he or she plans to leave or retire, for example, in 18-24 months. Here the board takes an active role in preparing the organization for a leadership transition?agreeing upon organizational priorities, building board and staff capacity, and taking the essential steps to prepare the organization for an executive search that will attract the very best candidates.

No matter what kind of leadership transition you are preparing for?one with plenty of lead time or a sudden and unexpected loss of a leader, we can help you develop a succession plan that will make the very best of this moment in time, gain clarity about direction, build staff and board leadership skills, manage the communications and essential relationships, and set the stage for a successful transition.

Preparing your organization for the future doesn?t have to be overwhelming. TLS can help you establish a succession planning process to successfully move internal people into key roles in your organization.

We help pinpoint your leaders.
We put together a model for your executives to use to identify key positions that need to have internal people groomed to fill them.

We teach you to develop them.
We build an infrastructure to make your future leaders successful. We teach you to help them develop their knowledge, skills and abilities so that they are ready to fill their new roles when the time comes.

We guide you through the process.
The TLS consulting team will be with you every step of the way as you learn and work with your succession planning process.

Succession Planning