Having a continuous and sustainable succession planning process helps organizations ensure they have a strong pipeline of leaders to drive their future success. For it to be successful, businesses should embed it and make it a part of their integral business strategy. Here are a few things to consider: • Make succession planning a priority, and include it in your organization's overall business plan. Leaders should allocate resources, time, and budget to ensure that the program is well-organized and executed effectively. • Get the right technology to support you through the process. You’ll need to bring multiple data types together (performance, tenure, skills performance, etc.), align it and visualize it. If this is done on spreadsheets or on the wrong platform, the process will be manual, slow, and very risky. You’ll also need a purpose-built technology to test different scenarios, move people around and see the impact of decisions before sharing your plan with stakeholders. • Determine which positions are critical to the organization's success and which employees are currently performing in those positions. Use this information to come up with a plan for developing and preparing potential successors. • Build talent pools of employees who have the potential to fill critical positions in the future. This should be an ongoing process, and employees should be regularly evaluated for their readiness and potential. • Identify areas in which you can provide development opportunities to help employees gain the skills and experience needed to be successful in critical positions. It can include mentoring, training, job rotations, and other forms of professional development. • Regularly track and monitor the progress of the succession plan and adjust it as needed. This will help ensure you’re always prepared for potential leadership transitions. • Communicate the importance of succession planning to all employees and engage them in the process, in order to create a culture of talent development and encourage employees to take ownership of their career development.