As published in the Winnipeg Sun. We all know that within the next three to seven years, baby boomers will be leaving the workplace and the entire business landscape will change. Yet most business owners aren't too fussy about confronting their own mortality, let alone that of their staff. It's just something that people avoid until they are faced with reality. However, one means of getting a succession planning process started is to use the upcoming summer vacation planning as a test. After all, the organization will be experiencing increased absences as leaders in key positions, as well as workers throughout the company, take their holidays. Alternative arrangements must be made to ensure work is done and productivity maintained.

Where do you start? First of all, it is important to identify the mission critical positions within your workforce. These are the roles that are required to continue moving the vision forward. This helps you to identify positions that are at risk of not having a substitute employee with the same required skillset, be it for summer replacement or longer term succession planning. Once you have identified the number of at risk positions, you next need to conduct a competency analysis. In other words, what are the knowledge, skills and abilities required to do each job?

After you have completed an analysis of the jobs within your organization, you need to take time to assess the internal capabilities of your staff. What is the skills match between what you need for vacation relief versus formal succession planning? Will short term appointments and stretch assignments help to develop your employees? As well, be sure to use a leadership and communication style assessment tool, one that assesses multiple variants that apply to your company. Select a tool that will also help to frame interview questions as this will enable you to more thoroughly assess the candidates.

The assessments will also help you to determine what kind of training will be required, what type of internal assignments need to be put in place to develop your candidates and what type of external professional development will be required.

At the same time, you may decide that an individual may be well suited for a short term temporary assignment but that the long term vision must be driven by someone else, perhaps a candidate external to your organization. In many cases, it is not the technical skills an individual is lacking but they may have some sort of professional baggage that will prevent them from being accepted by their former peers. On the other hand, in many cases, these perceived weaknesses can be overcome by hiring a personal executive coach to work with them over the first year of their transition to leader.

In determining if you wish to recruit an external candidate, take time to assess both the strengths and weaknesses of your organizational culture. Keep in mind that an external candidate, even if they come from the same industry, will require a minimum of one to two years of orientation and experience in your organization in order to perform at a high level of productivity.

Summer vacation scheduling is a great time to give employees short term opportunities in a number of different job categories. By creating these opportunities and implementing a cross training philosophy, employees will experience a broader perspective resulting in "generalist" skills that are very valuable in the long term.