Succession Planning

Definition

The process of identifying who will take over key roles when current leaders leave, retire, or ascend to a higher plane of executive retreat. In practice, it means everyone secretly knows who the backup is except the backup, who finds out the day their predecessor quits.

Example Usage

"Succession planning identified me as the backup for my director. Nobody told me until she resigned. I learned about my promotion and my workload increase in the same sentence." - An ambushed successor

Related Terms

Intermediate

total rewards statement

A document showing your salary plus all the benefits, hoping you'll feel rich when you see your 'total compensation' even though most of it isn't actual money. It's HR's way of saying 'you're not underpaid, look at all this health insurance we provide!'

👥 Human Resources

Beginner

Org Chart

A colorful diagram that shows who reports to whom, updated approximately never and accurate for about 48 hours after each reorganization. It's the corporate family tree, except family trees don't have dotted-line relationships.

👥 Human Resources

Intermediate

mediated

The act of stepping into the middle of a conflict to resolve differences, ideally before lawyers get involved or someone updates their LinkedIn status to "It's complicated." Professional mediators facilitate settlements by getting both sides to actually listen to each other—a skill apparently so rare it requires certification. It's diplomacy with a process, and yes, someone's getting paid for it.

👥 Human Resources

Beginner

glass ceiling

An invisible barrier preventing women and minorities from advancing to senior leadership positions, despite qualifications. A metaphor that's unfortunately more durable than glass.

👥 Human Resources

Intermediate

span of control

The number of direct reports a manager supervises, indicating how thinly their attention and favoritism will be spread. Too many subordinates means nobody gets managed; too few means micromanagement hell.

👥 Human Resources

Beginner

wage

The hourly pittance exchanged for your labor, calculated with mathematical precision to be just enough to keep you showing up but not enough to feel financially secure. It's the working class's version of a salary, typically paid weekly or biweekly and always subject to mysterious deductions. Unlike salary, it makes overtime possible—the only silver lining to being paid by the hour.

👥 Human Resources

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Put a pin in it

To pause discussion on a topic with the promise of returning to it later, which translates to 'let's pretend this never ...