Most councils have fifteen to twenty roles that quietly carry the operating risk of the organisation. Many sit with one person. If that person leaves, a service slows, a statutory deadline comes under pressure, or years of local knowledge walk out with them.
Why is council succession risk different?
Council teams are lean by design. A specialist may be the only person who understands a rating rule, a complex consent history, a waters asset, or the practical sequence behind a regulatory process. Their knowledge includes what is written down and what is not: previous decisions, local relationships, workarounds, exceptions and the reason a process looks the way it does.
The external market is thin too. Experienced consenting staff, rates specialists and waters engineers are hard to replace quickly, particularly outside the main centres. Recruitment may move the vacancy from one council to another without adding capability to the region. That makes internal cover and shared capability more important than a recruitment plan alone.
How do you find the roles that are genuinely critical?
Start with services, not the organisation chart. The most senior roles are not automatically the most critical. Ask what would stop, become unsafe, miss a statutory requirement, or lose important history if the current role holder left on Friday. Follow the work until you find the point where no one else can pick it up.
Look for roles with scarce technical skills, sole decision authority, deep community relationships or knowledge that exists mainly in one person's head. Then test the consequence. A difficult vacancy is not necessarily a critical role. A critical role is one where a gap creates a material service, financial, legal or reputation risk.
How should you assess potential without choosing the familiar person?
Succession decisions often favour the person who is visible, confident and already similar to the current leader. That is familiarity dressed up as evidence. Agree the criteria before discussing names. Assess the skills the future role will require, examples of learning in unfamiliar situations, judgement under pressure, and the person's willingness to take on broader responsibility.
Keep performance, potential and readiness separate. Someone can perform strongly in their current role without wanting the next one. Another person may have the potential but need two years of deliberate experience. Record the evidence and have more than one manager test the judgement. This makes decisions fairer and exposes assumptions early.
If one resignation can put a core service on the risk register, succession planning is already an executive issue.
How do you build cover without giving everyone a deputy?
Most councils cannot duplicate every specialist role, and they do not need to. Build cover around the risk. Document the decisions, contacts and exceptions that matter. Give another person deliberate exposure to the work through acting opportunities, project roles and paired decisions. Where internal depth is not realistic, agree regional sharing arrangements before a vacancy occurs. The aim is enough knowledge and capability to keep the service moving, without a spare person for every job.
What should you do this quarter?
Do not begin with a large talent process. Start with the operating risks your executive already understands.
The first version will not be perfect. It does not need to be. A visible map of critical roles, current cover and next actions is enough to turn succession from an annual discussion into active risk management.
