Young companies, like those that populate the crypto landscape, are often so focused on immediate needs and the urgent items on each day’s to-do list that “tomorrow problems” can get deprioritized. One such item is succession planning, and it’s a necessity that can create a slew of problems if it isn’t both addressed and maintained as a company grows.
Succession planning is more than naming immediate successors for the leadership team in the event of their departure or incapacity. When addressed in a comprehensive manner, it should provide more than one layer of foreplanning for transition when top leaders are unable to execute their duties, and it nurture future leaders to ensure an appropriate pool of talent is being prepared to move up.
In government, it’s typical to have a “line of succession” that can extend dozens of degrees from the top roles to ensure that even in a catastrophic situation, there is a clear plan in place to give a new leadership team definite ownership of clearly defined roles. In companies, and especially in startups, the line of succession can be short, shallow, and sometimes out of date with how the organization has evolved since being formalized.
In addition to defining roles and making it clear who would move up into them if the need arose, good succession planning includes a similar degree of preparation to that undertaken by the core incident response team. There should be a playbook that is current and reviewed/refreshed regularly and in the aftermath of any substantial organizational changes. There should also be a degree of preparation and review among the tiers of leadership to guarantee that all key roles are filled efficiently, whether a leader’s departure is planned or abrupt.
When assessing a company’s risk, Evertas looks at succession planning critically. In a natural disaster, like a tornado, a company’s physical facilities aren’t the only thing that can be decimated. Should such an event strike a building in which more than one leadership team member is present, a company can be caught on the back foot in a moment of extreme duress, freezing business operations to a degree that can stop their progress altogether. A crisis or scandal that involves multiple members of the leadership team, or a security incident that temporarily locks the leadership team out of the execution of their roles, can both be made exponentially worse if a clear succession plan isn’t in place– current and familiar to all relevant stakeholders.
Do you know the state of your organization’s succession plan? Have you got a clear sense of where its weaknesses might be? If not, contact our professional services team today to discuss a comprehensive risk assessment.