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Succession planning is not easy even though this infuses our everyday lives in some way or the other. However, a succession plan helps both small and large organizations to maintain a degree of consistency with investors and customers. However, most of the businesses overlook this. Succession planning is process which is ongoing and deliberate. It is a process where individuals are identified, prepared and developed so that they can assume responsibilities for vital roles of the company. This is not a quick and instant process but succession planning can also be done on emergency basis. Succession planning can be implemented in a number of ways. However, this can be confusing and hence, here in this article we will take a look at the starting point.

Before you start with any succession planning, you are required to answer a few questions which are vital for finding out the starting point for you succession plan implementation. Here are the questions that you need to answer honestly:

- What type of leadership attributes are you looking for in the candidates for succession?

- Are the attributes you are looking for generic in nature or are they unique to your company?

- What was/is the most successful element in creating leaders?

- What exactly help you in the past to develop leaders and what failed?

- How do you incorporate the strategies of your organization in your process of succession planning?

- What kind of hindrances do you think will be there to your succession planning?

- Finally, what do you think is the most important asset of your company? (Please do not answer this to be anything else other than people)

Once you answer all the questions above, you need to begin your succession planning. The first thing will be to identify the leadership attributes which fit well into the vision and culture of your company and then widely communicate the same. There has to be executives for your succession planning and you need to identify them from director level, VP's and even C-levels and then ask them to list up potential successors (a maximum of 3) that they think to be the best and ask them to list the gaps that they need to fulfill to pick up the job immediately. This will help to identify the areas where the prospective successors will need more training.

Once that is done, you will have to consider the strengths of the prospective successors and while assessing the strength, you need to find out whether the candidate is capable to taking over the new responsibility? Whether he or she is underemployed, well matched or over employed? Whether he or she needs additional training to assume the new level of work? Whether he or she has the necessary skill set to do that?

Next, you need to create development plans for those candidates who are in need of some additional training. Give responsibilities which he or she will normally have to handle. Make lateral moves and see how nicely ideas flow and cross train before the vertical move. In short, you need to find out underutilized and over-utilized staff reassign jobs and bridge the necessary gap before you make that move towards long term overhaul with your succession planning.