Identifying critical positions

Job descriptions and operational reality drift apart. The position on paper is A. The work being done is B. Sometimes the gap is small. Sometimes the JD describes a role that has not existed for two years while the employee has quietly absorbed three other portfolios. Before any criticality scoring, write down what the position actually delivers today, not what the JD claims it delivers. The exercise alone often surfaces hidden dependencies the org chart hides.

There are two clean ways to close the gap. Either redistribute the responsibilities the role has accumulated and bring it back to its original scope. Or formally update the JD to reflect the responsibilities that have stuck. Both are valid. What is not valid is leaving the gap open, then trying to plan succession against a description that nobody recognizes.

The same logic applies when assessing where the business is going. If the position needs to deliver more than the current person can, you face a choice: redesign the structure, recruit at a different level, split the role across two specialists, strengthen the team around the seat, or eventually replace. Each option has a different cost and timeline. None of them are reachable if you start with "who can replace Paul?" instead of "what does this position need to deliver in 24 months, and what is the gap?".

Once the position is defined accurately, the A/B/C Assessment Model scores it on four criteria. Each criterion is rated A (direct and high impact), B (indirect and moderate impact), or C (limited impact). The combined score determines whether the role qualifies as a key position and enters the succession pipeline.

Criterion 1: Strategic contribution. Rating A means the role is crucial to future strategic choices. The role defines the strategic future of the business; without it, the long-term vision cannot be executed. Example: VP of Business Development who decides which markets to enter next, which partnerships to build, and shapes the 3-year growth plan. Rating C means the role is operational or execution-focused; strategic choices happen several levels above this position. Example: Warehouse Supervisor who ensures daily shipping targets are met following processes defined by the Supply Chain Manager.

Criterion 2: Decision-making authority. Does the role have the "final pen"? Rating A means full authority over divisional budget and direction. Example: Supply Chain Manager who signs supplier contracts autonomously. Rating B means the role proposes directions to a committee or manager. Rating C means the role implements decisions made by others. Example: Accounts Payable Specialist who processes invoices following the approval workflow set by the Finance Manager.

Criterion 3: Bottom-line impact. How close is the role to the dollar sign? Three paths to an A-rating: revenue generation (Sales, Business Development, Product Strategy), cost reduction (Operations, Supply Chain, Lean Management), or risk protection (Legal, Compliance, Cyber Security). Rating A example: Procurement Manager whose mandate is to deliver 2M of savings per year. Rating C example: Sales Admin recording RFQs and POs, dispatching invoices to customers.

Criterion 4: Impact if not replaced (the vacuum test). If this seat is empty for six months, does the business grind to a halt? Rating A means the organization is at risk immediately, in both short and long term. Example: Product Manager in a tech company where the roadmap stalls, engineering teams lose direction, client integrations halt, and competitors gain ground every week the role stays empty. Rating C means business as usual; the workload is absorbed by other team members with minor delays. Example: a second Marketing Coordinator on a team of three.

Once each position has been rated on the four criteria, the combined score maps to one of three thresholds. The threshold determines whether the role enters the structured succession pipeline or stays in standard HR processes.

Positions scoring 80% or above are KEY POSITIONS: a succession plan is required immediately. Positions scoring 60 to 79% are IMPORTANT: monitor carefully and reassess if vacancy risk grows, but they do not yet enter the pipeline. Positions scoring below 60% are STANDARD: normal replacement and recruitment is sufficient.

The cutoff matters more than the precise score. A role at 79% and a role at 81% are operationally similar; the threshold simply forces a decision about where to invest succession effort. Programs that try to plan succession for everything in the IMPORTANT band end up diluting the investment that should go to the truly KEY positions. The threshold is a forcing function, not a value judgment about the people in the roles.

Most key positions fall into one of four archetypes. Recognizing the archetype helps you anticipate the kind of risk the role carries, the kind of successor profile you need, and the kind of continuity plan to build.

C-level roles. Managing Director, CFO, COO, CTO. These are obvious key positions in almost every company. The succession risk is high because the role consolidates strategic, financial, and operational authority in one seat. The successor profile is rarely internal-only; the pipeline often combines an internal candidate plus an external option held in reserve.

Division managers and business unit heads. These positions hold operational continuity together. Without them, a P&L unit loses its day-to-day decision center. The successor profile is usually internal: a senior manager from within the unit who already understands the customers, the cost base, and the team. Plot these candidates on the 9-box grid before the People Review to separate ready successors from those who still need development.

Company experts. Roles that consolidate critical knowledge: a machine design lead in a manufacturer, a senior process specialist in a regulated industry, a product expert who has shipped every release. The risk is the loss of institutional memory, not the loss of authority. The successor plan often includes structured knowledge transfer, documentation, and a 12 to 18 month overlap, not just an org-chart move.

The do-it-all role. One person handling government affairs, key customer relationships, internal reporting, legal coordination, and a side portfolio nobody else fully understands. This archetype is the most dangerous because the role was never structured deliberately; the company became dependent on one person without noticing. Treating the do-it-all seat as a single succession problem is wrong. The right move is to first split the role, then plan succession on each split.

The mechanics of the assessment matter as much as the criteria. A poorly run scoring exercise produces a list nobody believes, and the list ends up in a folder.

The workflow has four stages. HR prepares the framework: the four criteria, the rating definitions, the scoring thresholds, and a pre-populated table of every position by department. N+1 managers assess each position in their scope. The system calculates the consolidated score and applies the threshold. HR then reviews the output with department heads, then with the Managing Director. Once the key-position list is locked, the next step is high-potential identification against those positions.

The most important rule in the workflow is that managers must score the expected outputs of the position, not the current performance of the person sitting in it. This is where hidden dependencies surface. A manager who scores "the role" instead of "Paul" sees that the bottom-line impact is rated A but the decision-making authority is rated B, because Paul has been deferring to the Finance VP for years. That gap between the role's expected authority and the role's actual authority is the structural issue the assessment is designed to expose.

The list should not stay frozen. Review it at least once per year with business unit heads or the Managing Director, depending on company size. New roles enter, old roles change, and what was critical last year may have been absorbed by a restructure. A static list is a list that decays.

First-cycle programs that try to cover the entire organization fail in a predictable way. Effort dilutes across hundreds of positions. The output is a giant spreadsheet nobody acts on, and leadership concludes that succession planning is an HR exercise with no business value.

Start with 5 to 8 truly critical positions. Score them with the A/B/C model, run the talent identification against those specific roles, build the development plans, and present the result to the CEO. Concrete cases that the leadership recognizes (the C-level seat, the most exposed BU head, the do-it-all role everyone knows about) prove the process works on the ground before it scales.

Year-one credibility earns year-two scope. Once the CEO has seen real plans for real positions, the conversation shifts from "should we do this?" to "where else?". Expansion to 30, 80, 200 positions becomes politically possible because the value has been demonstrated, not pitched. The full succession planning process then runs annually with a stable position-criticality baseline.

The same mistakes show up across companies. They are not technique problems. They are sequencing problems and governance problems.

Starting with the person, not the position. The conversation jumps to "who replaces Paul?" before asking "should this role really concentrate this many responsibilities?". The succession plan that follows is built on top of a structural problem that nobody has examined.

Asking managers to score the person instead of the role. "Paul scores A on bottom-line impact" is meaningless. The question is whether the position scores A, regardless of who occupies it. Managers must rate the role's expected outputs, not their current incumbent's performance.

Designing the org around current limitations. You accept that the Finance Director can only deliver 1M and split the territory permanently. The right move is to define the position the business needs first, then decide whether to coach, recruit, restructure, or replace. Otherwise you build the company around the limitations of today's people instead of the role the business actually needs.

Trying to plan every position at once. A first cycle that covers 800 positions delivers a spreadsheet, not a plan. Start with 5 to 8 positions, prove the value, expand from there.

Treating the key-position list as permanent. The list decays. Roles change, restructures absorb scope, new business units appear. Without an annual review with business unit heads, the list becomes a historical artifact within 18 months.