The Importance of Succession Planning

One of the most important things a manager can do for their team is to always have a successor under way to take over the team in the event that you’re “unavailable.” When you first step into an existing team, it will be unclear as to who that replacement could or should be, but as you go through your 1:1s and as you get to know your team members, it will generally make itself clear who is interested in taking on a role like yours, and who is able to do so. (Those two groups may have different members within them, by the way; hopefully there’s at least some overlap, but it’s not guaranteed.)

Once you’ve identified who the interested parties are, start talking to them about what it means to be an engineering manager. Point them to your favorite books on management. Get them thinking about task assignment and how to handle some of the questions and debates that go along with that. Have them be responsible for not only their own stories but some other stories as well, so that they get a hint of what it’s like to depend on others to determine their success or failure (as you do). And so on.

Make sure to talk with your manager about your choice. Make sure your boss knows who your designated successor is, and do the best you can to get your designated successor to meet with your boss every so often. This way, if something derails you and you’re unable to come in to work for a while, your boss already knows who you’ve been training for the role, and can step in to help your designated successor step up.

“Yes, but…” But what? “But what if they get to the point of being just as good at management as me? What if they’re better at it? Doesn’t that make me unnecessary or irrelevant?” Ah, the lamentations of the insecure manager. Relax. The superboss doesn’t care; in fact, some of my proudest moments have been when people on my team have elevated their skills to the point that they took over the role that I had when I left, or when they left my team to go lead a different team. Remember, part of what makes a boss a superboss is their coaching tree—the term sport uses to show how many of a given coach’s assistant coaches go on to become head coaches. Bill Walsh, head coach of the 49ers, had such an extensive coaching tree that by the time you take it to the second- and third-generations, he’s basically coached the entire NFL. One man literally changed the entire game with his success.

That’s the kind of legacy you want to have.

If you’ve definitely got a successor who’s chomping at the bit to run a team, tell your boss. Advocate for the successor’s promotion, either into your chair (freeing you up for your next big thing), or into a peer’s chair elsewhere in the organization. Now your coaching tree has grown, and your influence with it. Then, of course, you need to select a new designated successor, and there’s a good chance the pool of interested candidates has grown because they’ve now seen that being your designated successor has real growth opportunities tied to it. It may be hard to choose just one—but as it turns out, you happen to know another new manager who’s also going to be looking for a designated successor, so maybe suggest that the interested party join that team and grow with that new manager? Sure, you’ll have to train up two new folks instead of just one, but remember, that’s what the superboss does: build a team that is a constant talent factory that takes in raw talent, and turns out stars who are ready to take over the industry.

Practically speaking, if you have a designated successor who you think might be ready, prove it: have your successor take over the team for a period of time while you work on something different for your boss for a short period of time. Or, better yet, just step away, period.