The prompt
Score 10 of 10, Excellent
Use it when You need key roles, possible successors, readiness and development steps in one view.
- {{audience}}
- {{key_roles}}
- {{talent_notes}}
- {{horizon}}
Full prompt and why it works
Prompt
Build a succession plan for the key roles below, with a nine-box grid, for {{audience}} to discuss in a talent review. It is a starting point for that discussion: placements are agreed by the leaders in the room with HR, and nothing in it is a promise of promotion or a judgment to share with the people named. Key roles, why each matters, and how likely it is to fall vacant: """ {{key_roles}} """ Notes on possible successors, one block per person, using initials or IDs. For each: current role, performance evidence (results and ratings), evidence of potential (larger scope taken on, how quickly they learned new work, how they have led others), and career interests only as the person has stated them: """ {{talent_notes}} """ Planning horizon: {{horizon}} Produce: 1. Nine-box grid: a 3 by 3 table with potential (high, medium, low) as rows and performance (low, medium, high) as columns, and each person's initials in a cell. 2. Evidence table with the columns Person, Performance placement and evidence, Potential placement and evidence, Basis (evidence or mostly opinion). 3. Succession table with the columns Key role, Successors (up to three), Readiness (ready now, 1 to 2 years, 3 years or more), Gap to close, Development steps (two or three concrete ones, such as a stretch assignment or covering for the role holder), Emergency cover if no one is ready. 4. Risks: roles with no ready-now successor, people named for too many roles, and single points of failure. Keep any text outside the tables under 300 words. Rules: - Use only the notes. Do not invent results, ratings or interests. - Do not use or mention age, years to retirement, family situation, pregnancy or leave, health, disability, gender, race, religion, nationality or any other protected characteristic, or proxies for them such as "energy", "fresh blood" or "fit", because they are unfair and in many places unlawful grounds for these decisions. - Treat potential as evidence of what someone has done, not as a feeling about them. A good result lets two leaders read the same evidence and place each person in the same box. Where the notes give only opinions, such as "strong leader" with no example, do not guess: place the person provisionally, mark the basis "mostly opinion", and list the question to answer at the review.
Variables
- {{audience}}
- Who will discuss the plan, for example "the leadership team and the HR director".
- {{key_roles}}
- The roles that matter most for continuity, why each matters, and whether the holder may leave or move soon.
- {{talent_notes}}
- One block per possible successor, using initials or IDs, with evidence of performance and potential and any career interests they have told you about.
- {{horizon}}
- How far ahead you are planning, for example "the next three years".
Why it works
- What good looks like. Placements must rest on evidence two leaders would read the same way, which is what keeps a nine-box from becoming a ranking by impression.
- What to avoid. Age, years to retirement, family, leave and proxies such as "energy" are ruled out by name, because they are the biases that most often creep into succession talks.
- If unsure. Opinions without examples are placed provisionally and marked, with the question to settle at the review, instead of being treated as fact.