Jump-Start Your Succession Plan: Create an Emergency Management Plan

Are you having trouble figuring out your succession plan?

You’re not alone. Most leaders I work with get stuck in the same spiral of questions:

• Who will replace me?
• Who will replace them?
• Do we even have the bench strength?
• And where are we going to find these people, knowing how long our current open positions have already taken to fill?

It’s a lot. And that swirl of questions can keep you from ever actually starting.

Here’s a hack that honors that reality and still moves you forward.

Start with an Emergency Management Plan

Instead of trying to map out a full succession plan from scratch, start smaller. Start with an emergency management plan.

The question is simple: if you were suddenly unable to do your job, who would step in?

Not permanently. Not as your handpicked successor. Just, who takes the wheel tomorrow if you can’t?

I Saw This Work in Hospitals

When I worked with hospitals, they all had emergency management plans. There was a clear lineup. If the CEO was suddenly out, everyone knew who would run operations, who would handle the outward-facing communication, who would lead through a pandemic or a catastrophic systems failure.

One of my clients in Northern New England called this their “If the CEO gets hit by a moose” plan.

The point is, these weren’t aspirational documents. They were practical. They named real roles and real responsibilities so the organization could keep functioning no matter what happened.

Why This Unlocks Your Succession Plan

Knowing who those people are in your organization (even temporarily, even imperfectly) does something powerful. It lets you look at your succession plan in a whole new light.

Suddenly you can see who’s actually in place. You can see the gaps. And you can start thinking about what positions might take over key functions, rather than getting stuck on what personalities are available.

That distinction matters.

Base It on Positions, Not Personalities

One of the most important shifts in organizational succession planning is moving from people to positions.

When you tie your plan to a specific person (“Sarah would be great at this”), you create fragility. What happens when Sarah leaves? You’re back to square one.

But when you tie your plan to a position (“the VP of Operations would step into this role”), you’ve created something durable. As you hire people into those positions, they already know how the organization stewards that role. They know what would be required of them should something unexpected happen.

That’s not just good succession planning. That’s organizational resilience.

Four Steps to Jump-Start Your Plan

You don’t need a perfect succession plan today. You need a starting point. Here are four steps to get you moving.

Step 1: Identify What’s Mission-Critical

What are the core actions and activities that make your organization you? Not everything on the to-do list, but the things that absolutely have to keep going if a crisis hits. Managing staff and running payroll. Communicating with media and your community. Fundraising or sales. Managing debt. Communicating with regulatory agencies.

Brainstorm the functions that, if they stopped, would put your organization’s survival at risk.

Step 2: Map Those Functions to Your Org Chart

Once you know what’s mission-critical, ask: what traditional departments and positions do those functions fall under? Does payroll sit with finance? Does community communication live in marketing? You’re not reinventing your structure here. You’re looking at the org chart you already have and identifying which existing positions could carry those critical functions forward.

Step 3: Bring Your Department Leaders into the Conversation

This is where it gets good. Gather the leaders from each of those departments (as a group, not one-on-one), share your draft plan, and ask them two questions:

• What do they think is mission-critical for the organization?
• And who do they believe could take responsibility for those functions in a crisis?

You’ll be surprised how much alignment, and how many good ideas, come out of that room.

Step 4: Make Sure You Always Have a Backup

For every mission-critical function, you should know three things:

1. who’s responsible for it now,
2. who’s on the bench if something happens to that person, and
3. who steps in if the backup is unavailable too.

That layered coverage is what turns a good-on-paper plan into something that actually holds up under pressure.

You’ve Just Jump-Started Your Succession Plan

With those four steps, you’re well on your way to being prepared for the next crisis. I hope you can see this can work for the whole organization. But it can also work for your specific department.

And here’s the bonus: you’ve also gotten more people in your organization talking about succession planning in a way that doesn’t scare them. It focuses them. It centers them on the mission and the people you serve.

That’s a very different energy than “who’s going to replace me someday.” And it’s a much better place to start.

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If you’re a leader who’s starting to think about your own transition, you might find this helpful too: Retiring without Retreating.