Our VP of Ops gave two weeks notice and I realized we had zero succession plan for anyone above director level
Found out on a Tuesday. She'd already accepted somewhere else, so there was no counter-offer conversation to even have. Two weeks, and she ran basically all of our operations across three sites.
I went looking through our people files that afternoon because I figured surely someone had documented a backup plan for a role like that. Nothing. Not even informal notes. We had succession plans for like four mid-level roles nobody was worried about, and nothing for the two people who'd actually tank the company if they left on short notice.
Spent the first week just trying to figure out who internally could even temporarily hold the seat. Two directors reported to her and neither wanted it - one flat out told me she'd quit before taking it permanently, she just didn't want the politics of managing her former peers.
Posted the role externally out of panic more than strategy. Got maybe 40 applicants in the first ten days, almost all either underqualified or people clearly mass-applying to anything with "VP" in the title. Went through probably 15 resumes that Friday night at home and didn't shortlist a single one.
Ended up bringing in an outside search firm here in UK mostly because I didn't trust myself to evaluate candidates for a role I barely understood the technical side of. That helped with the vetting piece but it didn't fix the actual problem, which is that we still don't have a real plan for the next time this happens. I think I convinced leadership to finally take succession planning seriously but we'll see if that survives the next fire drill.
Anyone gotten their org to build real succession plans before losing someone, not after? What did it take to get buy-in.