Public Safety Insights Newsletter: How to Identify Key Positions in Your Agency

How to Identify Key Positions in Your Agency
Public Safety Insight:	Step one in developing a succession process is identifying the key positions throughout your organization, not just those at the top.

One of the persistent myths about succession planning is that it should address only positions at the command staff or chief officer level. In fact, there are key positions throughout the agency, which I define as those that represent critical jobs, functions, skills, and/or competencies. Think about it: unless your agency is comprised of all volunteers, how many of your employees would come to work every day if they didn’t get paid? Thus payroll is a critical function. Who knew that the payroll clerk is a VIP in your agency?

Identifying the key positions in your agency is like triaging victims in the field: you categorize them by assessing them against pre-defined criteria.  Although setting up your organizational triage process takes some time, and usually much soul-searching, the result is that you know exactly how and where to prioritize your efforts and direct your resources – i.e., on the positions that would leave the agency most vulnerable if they are not filled with capable staff.

Here are the three organizational triage categories for identifying key positions. They are defined according to their impact on the agency’s survivability – i.e., its ability to achieve its mission:

Category	Impact on the organization’s mission
Critical	Cannot fulfill mission if missing
Very important	Signficant negative impact if missing
Important	Diminished level of performance if missing

For each position, function, skill, and competency, ask and answer TRUTHFULLY the following set of questions. What is the impact on our mission if we:

• Don’t fill the position?
• Delay filling the position?
• Omit some aspects of the position?
• Reduce the qualifications of the position?

Insist on very specific answers: "people will die" is not acceptable. Truthful and realistic responses collectively will enable you to prioritize each position. Assess all positions, functions, skills, and competencies using the above process. The assumption is that every position must be at least important to achieving the mission. If you find any that are not, ask yourself why they are there? How can you justify their existence? The result will be a prioritized list of positions throughout the agency. For succession planning purposes, you have a clear picture of your vulnerabilities and where you must focus your efforts and resources.

Just as is the case in the field, your work is not done when you’ve triaged each victim. Now you must TAKE ACTION based on your findings. Just as you wouldn’t think of leaving victims at the scene of the accident or emergency, don’t let your community down by failing to address your agency’s known vulnerabilities.

To read about this process in slightly more detail, take a look at my Organizational Effectiveness Triage Process article.

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To find other articles and resources that may be of value to you, I invite you to visit my web site at www.PublicSafetyInsights.net.

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©2014 Pat Lynch | Public Safety Insights