Don’t Just Hire, Grow: The Power of Leadership Pipelines in Succession
Stakeholders and organizational leaders often think of one thing when it comes to the succession planning process: executive search. However, this unintentionally narrow view causes mission-driven organizations to overlook a critical element: leadership pipelines. These pipelines, developed through strategic career pathways and strong talent management, enable organizations to grow talent and promote from within. This ensures an organization is always prepared when planning for the future – or pivoting for the unexpected.
What is the Succession Planning Process?
Succession planning involves all of the steps an organization takes to prepare for bringing new talent into key roles, either through hiring or internal development. While all roles are important, start by identifying the ones whose absence would severely impact operations. If you lack a succession or contingency plan for those critical positions, now is the time to act. Although often used for executive director or CEO roles, this process is valuable for any strategic role.
Investing time in a succession plan now ensures long-term stability for your organization by creating a playbook for future talent. If that doesn’t convince you, remember that starting early matters because developing leadership pipelines takes time, and second, life is unpredictable; even dedicated leaders face unexpected changes. Without a concrete succession plan and process, you’ll be caught unprepared, often leading to programmatic disruptions and fissures within the organization’s culture. Like many organizations, you may not have someone ready to step into a senior role, which, with no plan in place, may force the team to undergo a lengthy search and onboarding process. This process has been known to cost organizations as much as 213% of that person’s annual salary.
A successful succession planning process begins with these three fundamental steps:
- Assessing and preparing internal talent.
- Identifying talent gaps in your organization.
- Making your board attractive to potential talent.
At Edgility, we’ve consistently observed the advantage of having a strong internal talent pool to replace senior leaders. Since step three concerns external recruitment (more on that soon!), let’s focus on developing your internal talent through steps one and two.
The Role of the Leadership Pipeline in a Succession Planning Strategy
A leadership pipeline is a structured model that helps organizations identify, develop, and promote leaders throughout their organization. Its purpose is to ensure a consistent stream of prepared individuals ready to assume greater leadership responsibilities as the organization expands. This valuable tool is frequently underutilized in the mission-driven sector. Sometimes this is for good reasons (small organizations have their own unique challenges in creating a leadership pipeline), but most often it’s due to a misunderstanding of how to implement one in a nonprofit setting. Essentially, a leadership pipeline gradually increases responsibilities, moving staff from managing themselves to managing others, and potentially leading the entire organization. The goal isn’t to promote every entry-level employee to the C-suite, but to cultivate leadership capabilities so that staff who aspire to leadership roles obtain the necessary skills and knowledge. Nearly all organizations can create this pipeline through a talent management strategy known as career pathways.
How to Create a Succession Plan with Career Pathways
Career pathways are designed as a clear progression of roles, skill development, and learning opportunities that guide individuals toward their professional aspirations. Pathways outline how someone can progress in their profession over time, often moving from entry-level roles to more senior or specialized positions. While some roles have obvious next steps – many in the mission-driven sector do not. Which means it takes a bit of strategic planning to create effective career pathways.
Our team has created a free resource for developing career pathways (get it here), but the process should always start out the same: a job classification framework. Every career pathway initiative should begin with a robust job classification framework. This framework, as we advise, “should clearly define how jobs are categorized across different levels and departments within the organization, and it should visually represent the pathways for career advancement.” Once developed, you’ll need to effectively and transparently communicate the new framework. Not every role will necessarily have a direct next step – and that’s ok. But all staff should be aware of their options and the steps to advance within the organization if that’s their goal.
While career pathways are excellent for staff retention, they also serve as a foundation for building a strong leadership pipeline. They provide employees with clear development paths and illuminate organizational talent gaps for leaders. This data-driven approach empowers leaders to create targeted succession plans and invest in developing specific skills within the team. Well-executed career pathways result in enhanced leadership abilities, improved organizational knowledge, and a pool of employees ready for advancement.
Ensure Your Compensation Program Supports Your Succession Planning Process
As noted earlier, a robust talent management program, coupled with documented career pathways, not only develops internal leaders but also significantly improves staff retention. However, compensation is also crucial. Financial security is a basic need, and it should not be overlooked. The investment in the previously mentioned strategies is undermined if compensation isn’t addressed. Therefore, it’s essential to maintain an up-to-date compensation program, including regular salary increases, such as cost-of-living adjustments and performance-based raises, ensuring staff who wish to build their careers with the organization can afford to do so.
Moving Forward and Leaning into the Process
Succession planning is an ongoing process that requires significant time and effort. Mission-driven organizations that prepare proactively will navigate leadership transitions much more smoothly. This proactive approach fosters a cost-effective retention strategy, a talent management system that cultivates leadership skills, and a talent pool ready for expanded responsibilities. Edgility’s Career Pathways Assessment is an effective, free tool to get you started on building a succession planning strategy that starts from within. However, we know that given the current demands on many teams, sometimes outsourcing to a partner with objective expertise may be the best path forward. If you think this might be the right option for your organization, we invite you to get in touch with our Talent Management Team.
