Succession Planning for Security Departments

Survival of the fittest may work in the animal kingdom, but grooming the next generation of CSOs requires a substantial investment of time, a sincere interest in employee development and a dash of humility. Are you ready for succession planning?

Although a CEO's successor gets the most media attention, a succession plan should be in place for all of a company's top executives, including the CSO. "If you lose one or two senior executives, it's a domino effect that impacts a whole series of people," says John Bruckman, managing director of the Change Management Group, a consultancy staffed by industrial and organizational psychologists. "You want to replace those people from within, and you want someone to seamlessly step in and take over as if nothing happened. You should have two to three successor candidates for every key position," he advises.

We spoke with CSOs and management consultants to glean their perspective on the challenges and benefits of developing a succession plan for the CSO. We present their tips for growing security leaders who will ably guide your team into the future, and we show you why attention to succession planning can make your tenure as the CSO even more secure.Don't Fear the Reaper Executives often delay succession planning or give the process short shrift for the same reason that people put off drawing up a will; it's uncomfortable to think about death and dying. In the corporate world, creating a succession plan raises the equally feared specters of layoffs or retirement. It takes guts to tackle the issue head on.

A succession plan is more than a document containing the secret identity of your company's next CSO. It is a living mission statement that puts into writing the attributes that future security leaders must have. It also includes the development and training programs needed to nurture successors and a methodology for ensuring management's accountability to the plan.

A succession plan does not necessarily have to name an actual successor, although most CSOs we spoke with have candidates in mind that they have discussed with senior management. "The individual's identity is confidential to the point where it needs to be announced," says David Burrill, head of group security for British American Tobacco. "If you nominate someone too early, he'll think that what he does in the future doesn't matter." Instead, Burrill wants to keep his candidates hungry for the position. "[My candidates] will know that they're doing well, that they are highly regarded and will almost certainly know they're in the running for the job. But if there is only one person in the running, if there isn't a sense of competition, we have a problem."