When you do succession planning for your organization, start by asking yourself some critical questions as you begin the process of finding your internal subject matter experts. By identifying some initial information, you will ensure that you are talking to the right people and asking the right questions as you collect valuable information that allows your company to thrive beyond the work lives of the experts under your roof.

We’ve all heard of people who have been laid off during downsizing or have retired after 30 years of service only to be called back to their desks under a lucrative independent contract because, when they left, they took critical information or skills with them. With a proactive succession management plan in place on an ongoing basis, companies can save themselves the costs of these valuable contracts and your retired employees can move to Hawaii, even if they are less enriched by the generosity of the company that found it could not go on smoothly without them.

Finding Your Critical SMEs Before They Leave

To find your critical SMEs, ask these questions: What is it that makes your business hum? is it your great products? Your incredible customer service? Your patented product that is nearly impossible to reverse engineer? The personalities of the core founders? The people who understand your financials? The person who does your data analysis?

When you can identify what keeps your customers coming back for more, you will have isolated the knowledge, skills and attitudes that need to be preserved. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but not as difficult as you might think, either.

Rest assured that it is not just one product, one person, or one department that holds the key to your company’s value in the marketplace. The essence of what makes your company hum is a combination of the people, processes and information that come together as your distinctive brand.

Look Beyond Your Secret Sauce

Think of the fast food hamburger. People may come to the drive-up to get a tasty burger with “sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun”. But they may be able to get an equally tasty burger across the street. What is it that keeps them coming back to your drive-up?

Perhaps it is the smiling servers, clean restrooms, dependable quality of the food and the utensils that make the whole experience reliably enjoyable. So while you need to make sure you have the recipe for the burger, you also need to be talking to maintenance about their cleaning schedule, human resources about their customer service training, public relations about the promotions and vendor management about the paper products and bakery suppliers.

Do Succession Planning In An Organized Way

While this is a simple and obvious example, when you extend it to what is probably your much more complicated business, it will help you think through all the important aspects of your organization when you are doing a 360 degree succession plan – one that leaves no stone unturned. The best way to drill down and find your internal experts is to look at your organizational matrix and analyze it by functional area.

Who does what? Who else, if anyone, can do it? What do your knowledge workers know?

You may find it is that quiet guy in the corner who has been turning out reports and talking on the phone to your customers who you may have to call back out of retirement because, in his absence, people really notice what he did.

Inside each organization resides all the knowledge needed to run it well and profitably.

The expertise inside each organization is the foundation of the business. The product knowledge, the R&D capability, the customer service structure, the manufacturing ability and logistical support are the individual building blocks that make up the foundation of expertise upon which your business is built. It is what makes your company unique and special. In business lingo, it is your competitive advantage. That expertise is not easily replaced.

In order to thrive, your business needs to have the “lottery ticket” contingency covered. It is important to know the people within your organization who, if they won the lottery and retired to Hawaii tomorrow, would leave a serious and gaping hole in your company’s ability to develop, produce and deliver products to your customers. Those are the subject matter experts who can offer something to your internal training programs that very few other people can provide.

Find those people and begin to work with them today, because they are critical to your corporate survival.

Defining Your Critical Training Programs

Companies would not develop or allocate finite budget resources to a training program this is not important. So, let’s start by agreeing that all types of training are important to maximize the profitability of your enterprise. However, for the purpose of finding your all-important subject matter experts – the people you need to be talking to today – let’s divide training programs into three categories:

1. Non-essential

2. Essential

3. Critical

Non-essential training programs are those that develop people in a way that improves their performance. Without those programs, your business can continue to survive. It may not be as successful or profitable, your products and customer service may not be as flawless as they could be, but you have a sufficient product and viable customer service without that new class you brought in house for your executives called “Learning to Lead with Confidence in a Global Healthcare Environment” (Just made that up so if you provide such a course, no offense. If no such course exists, it would be quite valuable, don’t you think?). Often these training programs can be provided by any competent supplier that specializes in such general areas of soft skills and management optimization.

Essential training programs are those that are required for you to do business. These training programs include things like software training that is provider specific like the training your employees need to use your new hospital electronic records system. Other examples of essential training include compliance training so your employees can operate within the laws and regulations issued by the FDA and OSHA, for example. These training programs are necessary and not optional, but can usually be provided by an outside provider with a little customization for your company.

Critical training programs are those that are specific and essential to your particular organization. These training programs impart the knowledge that is key to a particular company’s survival. Critical training programs teach your employees your secret sauce, whether it is how you make your pills or how much ketchup goes into your Funburger. The secret to your individual business’s survival is finding the people who have this information and downloading what they know into your company’s knowledge base before they win the lottery. Sometimes these people are not just people with scientific knowledge, but they may very well be the people who drive the spirit of innovation or the ones who know how to work successfully to cooperate with customers and product advocates that make your company a star. Whoever they are, whatever they are doing, when you find the people who make your company’s individual difference to your customers, the people who understand the value and distinction your organization brings to your customers, those are the subject matter experts you need to be talking to.

Working With Your SME

After you’ve identified the subject matter experts who can provide the critical information that your organization needs to survive, you need to plan to work effectively with them to capture it. Because your subject matter expert is critical to your organization, that person is also very busy.

When working with your SME, you need to manage your time and schedule to keep your meetings with them targeted and productive. If you don’t have a training project manager, you need to be one. During your interviews, stick to your agenda and, afterwards, make sure you have a review process in place so that your SME approves the information you are collecting.

By identifying your critical subject matter experts and working efficiently with them to capture their unique knowledge, your company will not just survive, but thrive, as you will be building on the solid foundation in which you’ve already invested.