Succession planning is the process of identifying individuals who have the potential to fill critical positions when they are vacated. The first step in creating a succession plan, thus, is to identify these positions. 

Essentially, you need to identify which roles have the greatest impact on your the organization’s performance, and would also be the most difficult to replace. Selecting the right positions to focus on is important to the successful outcome of your plan.

So, how do you decide which roles are critical for succession planning? You can begin this process, by evaluating positions against a set of criteria for critical position identification. As a starter, you a use the following identification criteria –

1. Impact to business operations: How would day-to-day operations or business revenue be affected if this position or role was suddenly vacant?

2. Availability of external candidates: Would it be difficult to find qualified external hires to replace this position?

3. Internal bench strength: Are there qualified internal candidates who could step into this role today?

4. Unique skill set or knowledge base: Does this role require skills or knowledge that would be difficult to replace, or demand specific experience in your company or industry?

Evaluate each position or role using a 5-point scale where 5 indicates the highest point for each criteria. Other organizations also assign weights to criteria, or create sub-criteria for each to refine the identification process.

It’s important to keep the position description in mind during your evaluation. Try not to focus only on the person currently in the role as this might contaminate the critical position identification process.

By adding up the totals across the criteria, you’ll be able to develop a shortlist of key positions to consider for your succession plan. Smaller organizations should select one key position to concentrate on to begin their succession plan; larger ones may choose to move ahead with up to five positions. 

Starting small will make the succession planning process easier to manage and improve your likelihood of creating a successful plan. It will give you the chance to learn and gain insights, and enable you to build momentum as you move forward to expand the scope of your succession plan.