How to identify key positions for succession planning in 6 steps

Key positions for succession planning are the roles that would hurt your business most if they sat empty: roles that drive revenue, hold rare skills, keep you compliant, or depend on knowledge one person carries. Identifying them means scoring every role on two things, the impact of a vacancy and the risk that a vacancy happens soon, and planning successors for the roles that score highest on both.

TL;DR / Key Takeaways

• Key positions are roles whose vacancy would seriously hurt strategy, revenue, customers or compliance and that cannot be filled quickly.
• Score every role from 1 to 5 on business impact and vacancy risk. Plan successors first for roles high on both.
• A role is key when it meets two or more criteria. Examples: mission critical, hard to fill, rare skills, key person risk or compliance duty.
• Look past the C-suite. Middle managers and senior specialists with no direct reports are the roles most often missed.
• Judge the role, not the title or tenure, and write one line on why each role made the list.
• Deloitte data cited by SHRM shows 86% of leaders rate succession as urgent or important, but only 14% think they do it well.
• Review the list at least once a year and after any reorg, merger, new strategy or senior exit.

What are key positions in succession planning?

Key positions in succession planning are roles whose sudden vacancy would put strategy, revenue, customers, compliance or day-to-day operations at serious risk, and that cannot be filled quickly from the open market. A key position is defined by the role's impact, not by the job title or by the person who holds it today.

That distinction matters. A chief financial officer is almost always a key position. So is the only engineer who understands a legacy billing system, the plant manager who holds the safety licence, or the account director who owns your three largest clients. Many succession plans stop at the executive team, and that is where most of the hidden risk sits.

A good working test: if this person resigned tomorrow, how long would it take to get the work back to normal, and what would it cost in the meantime? If the honest answer is "months" and "a lot", the role belongs on your list.

Why does identifying key positions matter in 2026?

Identifying key positions matters because leadership and specialist exits are frequent, and most organizations are not ready for them. Challenger, Gray and Christmas counted 2,032 US CEO exits in 2025, and 446 of them were at public companies, the highest annual total the firm has recorded.

Readiness has not kept up. According to SHRM's 2025 coverage of its CHRO Priorities report, 37% of CHROs say developing succession plans across the organization remains a significant challenge. The same SHRM article cites Deloitte data showing 86% of leaders rate leadership succession as urgent or important, while only 14% think their organization does it well.

Knowledge loss is the second driver. SHRM also cites a Sinequa study in which 67% of IT managers worry about losing critical knowledge when people leave, and 64% say they have already lost significant knowledge to turnover. Add Gartner's forecast, quoted in the same piece, that 20% of organizations will use AI to flatten their structures through 2026, and the bench of middle managers who would normally step up is getting thinner.

Key takeaway: You cannot develop successors for every role. Naming the key positions first is what lets a small HR team spend its time where a vacancy would cost the most.

What criteria make a position key?

A position is key when it meets two or more of the criteria below. The list follows the State of California succession management model, which asks leaders to look for roles that are critical to the mission, create risk if vacant, are hard to fill, depend on one person, carry high turnover risk or need highly specialized skills, plus two business tests most private companies add.

Pro tip: Write the criteria down and agree on them with the leadership team before you score a single role. When the rules come first, debates about individual jobs get much shorter.

How do you identify key positions for succession planning?

You identify key positions for succession planning in six steps: start from strategy, list every role, score impact, score vacancy risk, plot and rank the roles, then validate the list with leaders and record why each role made it.

1. Start from strategy: Pull the three-year business plan and ask which capabilities it depends on. A company expanding into the EU needs regulatory and country leadership; a SaaS company moving upmarket needs enterprise sales and security leadership. Looking three years out matters because, as Evanta, a Gartner company, reported in 2025, 61% of CHROs say their workforce planning only covers a one-year horizon.
2. List every role, not just leaders: Export positions from your HRIS with function, level, incumbent, tenure and direct reports. Include individual contributors with rare skills and people managers in lean teams. SHRM's advice is to plan for people and know-how, not only job titles.
3. Score business impact (1 to 5): Rate what happens to revenue, customers, compliance and operations if the role is empty for six months. Use evidence such as revenue owned, number of clients, regulatory duties and how many teams depend on the role.
4. Score vacancy risk (1 to 5): Rate how likely a vacancy is in the next one to three years. Inputs include retirement eligibility, engagement data, market demand for the skill set, recent manager changes and whether the person is already a flight risk. Keep personal data to what you need, and never use health details.
5. Plot and rank: Put each role on an impact by vacancy risk matrix (shown in the next section) and add a third check: how hard the role is to replace. Roles high on impact and vacancy risk go to the top.
6. Validate and record: Review the draft list with each business leader, adjust, and write one line on why each role is on it. The California model makes documenting how positions were identified and prioritized part of the plan itself, which also helps when the board or auditors ask.

Steps two to five work best in a shared spreadsheet that HR and the business leader fill in together. If you are new to the wider process, our guide on how to get started with succession planning covers the groundwork.

How do you score and prioritize key positions?

Scoring and prioritizing key positions works best with three scores from 1 to 5: business impact, replacement difficulty and vacancy risk. Impact and vacancy risk decide where a role sits on the matrix; replacement difficulty breaks ties. Critical role worksheets such as the MangoApps critical role and vacancy risk template use the same three scores and ask for a written reason for every high or borderline rating.

In the government models, toolkits and HR templates we reviewed for this guide, we have seen the same pattern again and again: impact and vacancy risk on two axes, with the highest-scoring roles planned first.

Here is a worked example for a 600-person fintech company:

Use the quadrant to set timing. Roles in "act now" get named successors and development plans this quarter. "Watch list" roles need a named backup and documented know-how within twelve months. "Cross-train" roles are covered by spreading the work, and "monitor" roles go through normal hiring.

Once the list is ranked, a 9-box matrix helps you look at the people side: which employees combine strong performance with the potential to grow into each key role.

Which roles are usually key positions for succession planning?

The roles that usually qualify as key positions for succession planning are the CEO and the rest of the C-suite, function heads, people managers who run lean or high-revenue teams, and specialists whose skills or knowledge are rare. The exact mix depends on the industry and the business model.

Two groups get missed most often. The first is middle managers, who hold vendor, process and team knowledge and who are now thinner on the ground. The second is senior individual contributors with no direct reports, whose work stops completely when they leave. For a broader view of who could step in, see our guide on how to assess the current talent pool for succession planning.

What mistakes should you avoid when identifying key positions?

The most common mistakes when identifying key positions are treating seniority as a stand-in for importance, stopping at the executive team, and building the list once and never touching it again.

• Using tenure or title as the test: A long-serving manager is not automatically in a key position, and a new specialist can be. Score the role against the criteria.
• Planning for the person, not the role: The role may change before the incumbent leaves. Define the skills the role will need in three years, not the ones the current holder has.
• Covering only the C-suite: Executive roles are visible, but specialist and middle manager gaps often cause more day-to-day damage.
• Keeping the list in HR: Business leaders know where the real dependencies are. A list built without them misses roles and loses support.
• No written reasoning: Without a one-line rationale per role, the list cannot be defended or updated when people change.
• Too many roles: If half the company is "key", nothing is. Most mid-size firms end up with a focused list that HR can actually support.

Our article on common mistakes to avoid in succession planning covers the pitfalls that come later in the process.

What happens after you identify key positions?

After you identify key positions, the next step is to define the skills each role needs, assess possible successors against those skills, and give each successor a readiness level and a development plan.

1. Define the role profile: List the technical skills, leadership behaviours and knowledge each key position needs today and in three years.
2. Find and assess candidates: Look at high-potential employees and at internal movers, not just the obvious deputy. Use structured, objective assessments rather than manager opinion alone, so the shortlist is fair and you can explain it.
3. Set readiness levels: Group successors as ready now, ready in one to two years, or ready in three to five years. Mark roles with no internal option for an external search plan.
4. Close the gaps: Use stretch projects, mentoring, job rotation and formal training, and move people through internal mobility where it fits.
5. Capture knowledge: For key person risks, start handover notes, process documents and shadowing now, not when notice is given.

Testlify can help with step two. Its library of 3,500+ tests includes leadership and people management and strategic thinking assessments, which give HR a consistent, skills-based view of internal candidates before the talent review. Our guide on why leadership assessment matters explains how to use them.

How often should you review your key positions list?

Your key positions list should be reviewed at least once a year and again after any event that changes the organization: a reorganization, a merger or acquisition, a new strategy, a major product launch or the exit of a senior leader. Roles become critical, and stop being critical, as the business changes.

A simple rhythm works for most mid-market and enterprise teams. Review "act now" roles every quarter with the CEO or leadership team, check successor readiness twice a year, and rerun the full scoring once a year alongside workforce planning. Track a few signals between reviews: the share of key positions with at least one ready-now successor, how many key roles were filled internally, and how long key roles stayed vacant. For more on tracking results, read how to measure the success of a succession planning plan.

What should you do next?

Start small. Pick one business unit, agree the criteria with its leader, score every role, and see which positions land in "act now". That first list usually takes a few working sessions and gives you a clear, defensible place to start developing successors. When you are ready to assess internal candidates, browse the Testlify test library for leadership, management and role-specific skills tests.

Frequently asked questions about key positions for succession planning