5 keys to succession planning with leadership consultant Anton Gunn

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Imagine for a moment that you win the lottery tonight. Congratulations! You’re off to Tahiti, and it’s goodbye to the day job. Have you thought about who’s going to take your place? Now, imagine your boss bought a lottery ticket and has pulled you aside to say, “If I win big, my job is yours.” Do you want that job? Have you even considered whether you want that job?

On this episode of Voices in Healthcare Finance, author and leadership consultant Anton Gunn discussed the importance of succession planning not only for leaders but for employees across organizations. He offered the following five key areas to consider.

1. Plan for your departure from Day 1

Most leaders are focused on being successful at leading in the moment, Gunn said. That’s not wrong, but leaders who think only of the here and now are being short-sighted, he said.

“It’s understandable that as a leader, you want to have an impact. You’ve been given the opportunity. You want to lead and take your organization to the next level,” he said. “But the successful leaders are the ones who plan with the end in mind.”

Leaders who want to make a true impact should start by thinking about the legacy they’d like to leave, according to Gunn.

“If you don’t use your time, your talents and the role that you have to leave the organization better after you’re gone than when you found it, you might be successful as a leader, but you won’t be significant,” he said.

2. Act as though you’re on the verge of a lottery win

Gunn encourages leaders to plan not only for the long term but consider who would take their place if their position was suddenly vacant by choice or by circumstance.

“Can you write down the names of three people who work for you now who can do your job just as good or better than you can right now?” he asked. “If you can’t name three people, that is a problem.”

Developing people to step into a new role is an important aspect of succession planning in leadership, Gunn said.

“We know we can’t live forever or lead forever,” he said. “Start developing the people around you to eventually prepare them to take your role.”

3. Encourage succession planning all the way down

It’s not enough for leaders to consider how to replace themselves, Gunn said. It’s important to plan for the potential departure of every employee in the organization.

“You’ve got to think about succession planning for every senior level leadership role, and every senior leader around you should be thinking about it in their organizational chart,” he said.

Comprehensive planning also can include long-term goal setting, Gunn said. There might be a great employee several levels down who could someday be a great CFO, and developing that employee early can help contribute to their success and engagement in the organization.

4. Develop your people to leave

It’s important to build a culture of training and development in an organization, Gunn said. Doing so could mean a good employee leaves, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“You want to develop people and build a system where they go to other places and have a bigger impact,” he said. “If you have a good system, you’re not at all concerned about losing a person to go work somewhere else because you’ve developed a whole army of people who can duplicate that process over and over again.”

5. Be an active participant in your own development

It’s a great compliment to be named as a potential successor to a boss, but it’s also important to take one’s own goals into account, Gunn said.

“If your boss comes and says to you, ‘I’m grooming you to take over for me,’ that’s a great thing to hear. But your response should be, ‘Give me the timeline,’” he said. “If they don’t give you a timeline, you’ve got to be a little cautious to wonder, are they just telling me this in hopes that I don’t leave?”

It’s also important for employees to speak up when they’re not interested in moving up the ladder in that exact way. If a CFO is eyeing an employee to move into their role, but the employee would rather be a CEO, it’s important for the employee be clear about that goal.

“You’ve got to start staking out your own development path to go after that which you want,” he said. When the time is right to discuss future plans, a good boss will help an employee move in the employee’s desired direction and look elsewhere for someone to move into the role.

This episode was sponsored by Red Dot. Red Dot is the best technology-enabled acquisition solution for hospital self-pay motor vehicle accident accounts. Hospitals can leverage Red Dot’s solution to improve their bottom-line revenue while dramatically improving their patient relationships by avoiding debt collection activities. Red Dot: Good for hospitals, good for patients.