Having a succession plan ensures leadership continuity and organization stability. Most companies anticipate a certain amount of job turnover and reitrement, but even key personnel who plan to stay can be sidelined by illness or unexpected circumstances.

Having a plan in place before a key position is vacant can make even an unexpected transition smoother: an internal replacement is ready to hit the ground running with little-to-no downtime. A good succession plan keeps such bumps in the road from completely derailing the company, or affecting patient care.

Even just the process of creating a formal succession plan can be of great benefit to an organization in many areas. Personnel and positions most vital to the organization are identified (these are not always C-Suite positions). The process forces a critical assessment of organizational processes and procedures, which  leads to improvement in day-to-day facility operations.

Employees receive training and professional development that helps them prepare for advancement within the organization, and good succession plans create a program of lateral ‘cross-training,’ which helps employees better understand their peers’ roles, and can ultimately improve organizational troubleshooting. All of this creates an environment in which employees feel valued and have a clear path for advancement. This leads to happy, invested employees, which improves organizational culture, and increases employee retention.

Succession plans allow the current leadership to formally mentor the younger leaders. Given how many C-Suite leaders the healthcare industry will lose in the next decade, the importance of this cannot be understated. Senior leaders pass on not only their knowledge and experience, but also their philosophy and the underpinnings of the organization’s culture and traditions. This helps prevent a culture shift and brand crisis with every new CEO hire.

Developing the next generation of leaders requires evaluation of current leadership and the potential of other team members to move into those roles. Current executives can draft a list of competencies needed for their roles and engage younger leaders in a discussion of the skill development needed to achieve those competencies.

Ideally, the senior executives will engage the younger leaders in a focused and deliberate developmental journey that results in developing natural successors.

Of course, there are times when hiring from the outside is a better choice than hiring from within. While hiring from the inside can help maintain an organization’s culture, too much inside hiring can make a culture stale. Outside hires can bring in best practices from other companies and new ideas for growth.

While outside hires are desirable for how they will bring new blood to the organization, they can’t be complete ill-fits for the established culture. They must be able to adapt to the role as is, then begin to instill their perspective. They must have the same commitment to the organization as long-time employees and the motivation to move it forward. Skill sets in project management, leadership development, customer service and financial acumen are a must.

A thorough succession plan will identify opportunities to infuse new talent and consider what new roles will be needed within the next three, five and ten years.