Succession Planning at All Levels

If a construction company is growing at 15% per year, then it will double in size about every five years. Therefore, in general, every position must be training at least two people that will be capable of succeeding them within five years.

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Succession Planning at all Levels for Sustainable Growth. Timeline represented: Get Work, Buy and Fabricate, Do Work, and Keep Score. Color code your organizational chart considering growth over the next 5 years, retirements, and other turnover probabilities.

Consider:

  • It is a tight labor market. Assume that someone will leave for what they perceive to be a better opportunity elsewhere. 
     
  • Talent development isn’t a perfect science. Assume that at least half the people you identify as high-potentials won’t make it. The problem is you just don’t know which half. Better to develop too many good people than not enough. 
     
  • Some of the people in the current role will have to be moved into other roles as the organization grows, meaning they have to backfill their role as well as the roles opened up due to growth.  

Remember that even if you are in a role like President, as the company doubles in size, your key responsibilities will have to be split into newly created roles in the company. You will need to be grooming others for those roles while considering succession in the future. Focus changes with growth even for those in the same role.

Don’t worry about over-investing and developing too many good people. We have NEVER been called in to help a contractor solve the problem of having too much great talent around and not enough work for them. 

Learn more about mastering role transitions in the construction industry. 

Looking strategically at your organizational structure and talent development is where an experienced third party can be very helpful.  


Succession Planning at All Levels
Continue building value in your business, yourself and your key team members with a good succession strategy....

Succession Planning at All Levels
Continue building value in your business, yourself and your key team members with a good succession strategy....

Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act (The OODA Loop)
The OODA Loop is a decision-making framework originally developed for the military to make agility a competitive advantage. The focus on fast, localized decisions in rapidly changing environments aligns well with construction projects and businesses.
Aligning Career and Company Trajectories
Alignment of the people and job roles within a contracting business is what creates the synergies (1+1=3). Alignment of career and business trajectories is what makes both sustainable.
Building Your Target Talent Model
Talent is the most constrained resource in the construction industry through at least 2030. With the industry's growth outlook, the contractors with the best Talent Value Streams (TVS) will dramatically outperform. Sadly, there will also be failures.