Deputising: Making It Real

Most small organisations have somebody who would cover. Few have arrangements that function, because naming is not the same as preparing.

For a resilience routine built around “Deputising: Making It Real”, improvement depends on seeing whether backup work happens outside an emergency. Teams can use the workflow note to organise practice time and compare planned coverage with actual participation, but the record should prompt a handover conversation rather than become an automatic judgement about an employee.

For an independent benchmark, compare the local approach with Ready.gov business preparedness guidance; the useful test is whether ownership, access and recovery remain proportionate and explainable when the usual expert is absent.

Why naming alone fails

The deputy has never done the task.

They lack the access.

Nobody outside the organisation knows they are the alternate.

And they do not know the current state of anything: what is half-finished, what is promised, what is due.

All four surface at the same moment, which is the moment nobody has time to fix them.

What makes it real

The deputy has done the task at least once, recently, for real.

They have the access, tested.

Clients and suppliers know who they are.

There is somewhere they can see the current state.

And it is written down that they are the alternate, including what they can decide.

The rehearsal

The only reliable test is the person being genuinely away.

A planned absence is the rehearsal: the holiday note covers using it deliberately.

A deputy arrangement that has never been exercised is an assumption, and assumptions of this kind are usually wrong in at least one detail.

Defining the limits

What the deputy can decide alone.

What waits.

What gets escalated, and to whom.

Without this the deputy either overreaches or freezes, and both cause problems that get attributed to them.

Three lines, agreed in advance.

The state handover

The hardest part and the most neglected.

Before any absence: what is in flight, what is promised to whom by when, what is waiting on somebody else.

Fifteen minutes and a short note.

Its own note covers handover documents; the short version is that current state matters more than procedure.

Choosing a deputy

Capability matters less than availability and willingness.

The most capable person is frequently already the most loaded, which makes them a poor alternate.

And two partial deputies covering different parts is often better than one nominal deputy covering everything badly.

Paying attention to the deputy

Covering is extra work, usually unacknowledged.

Say so, and account for it: reduce their own load, or recognise it afterwards.

A deputy arrangement that quietly costs somebody their evenings will not be volunteered for twice.

What to check

Has your named deputy ever done the task for real?

Do they have the access, tested?

Do clients and suppliers know who they are?

And is it written down what they can decide without asking?

The point

Naming a deputy is not preparing one.

They need to have done the task, to have tested access, to be known outside, and to know what they can decide.

Underlying all of this

Everything in this collection reduces to four habits: know where the dependence sits, do the cheap fixes first, use the absences that already happen as rehearsals, and decide deliberately about what remains. None of it requires a framework, a tool or a consultant, and an organisation that does those four things consistently is substantially harder to damage than one with a succession document nobody has read.

The recurring pattern

The recurring pattern across every section here is the same: dependence forms through sensible individual decisions, becomes invisible because it feels like reliability, and is addressed only after it has cost something. The work that prevents that is small, continuous and unglamorous, which is exactly why it gets deferred.