The Metiss Group's Blog

Succession begins with documenting key aspects of HOW critical components of a position are done, but many leaders feel guilty asking a direct report to do this for fear it sounds like “I’m getting ready to fire you, so I need to know what you do and how you do it.

A direct report may jump to this conclusion, but it can be framed differently.  The truth is, not only does each job in your organization need critical functions well documented in case of emergency, but this must be done so your direct report can be prepared for growth and guilt free vacations.

Both the job they may someday leave must be documented so someone else can be cross-trained to perform the accountabilities well, and the job into which they may grow must be documented so they may be cross-trained and developed to be prepared for success.

Minimally, if key aspects are documented, the direct report can return from vacation prepared to keep the ball rolling, not having to dig through a back log.

Empower your direct reports to participate in succession by documenting critical components of a position so they can prepare to grow.

This entry was posted on September 22, 2013 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Leadership, Performance Acceleration. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.