Succession · JCIG Insights & Resources
Run the 30-Day Ghost Audit: A Practical Municipal Continuity Test
Picture a normal workweek in your department. Now imagine your most experienced supervisor is unexpectedly unavailable for 30 days. No phone calls to that person, no special exceptions, and no informal workarounds that violate your agency's rules.
What breaks first?
Perhaps a report is delayed because only one person knows where the information lives. Maybe a vendor relationship depends on personal notes. A critical system has no trained backup. Or the department keeps performing tasks but loses the standard that made those tasks useful.
The 30-Day Ghost Audit is a CAPTAIN leadership exercise that helps municipal leaders uncover those vulnerabilities before an absence, retirement, promotion, or turnover reveals them the hard way.
What the worksheet helps you examine
The PDF organizes the review into four areas: critical services and routines, decision authority, institutional knowledge, and team/culture continuity. For each essential function, you identify the primary owner, prepared backup, location of authorized instructions, and what would happen during a 30-day absence.
The exercise asks you to distinguish three conditions: no workable backup, a partial or untested backup, and a backup who can perform the work within authorized procedures. These are practical planning categories, not a formal risk score or an HR evaluation.
How to run it with a leadership team
Choose one department, not the entire municipality. Set aside 30–45 minutes. Identify five to eight services or decisions that matter most. Use the worksheet to identify a likely continuity failure and select one improvement—such as a controlled procedure, a cross-training session, an escalation map, or a documented handoff.
Do not copy passwords, resident data, personnel details, or restricted operational information into a public worksheet. Keep sensitive details inside approved municipal systems. And preserve chain-of-command and legal authorization requirements during any absence drill.
What happens Monday morning?
Ask one department head: “If you were absent for 30 days, which decision or process would require someone to call you?”
Choose that gap. Assign a qualified backup, provide the necessary authorized training, and schedule a small test of the handoff.
The worksheet can be used as a team conversation starter or as fieldwork within JCIG leadership development.
Schedule a leadership strategy conversation to discuss continuity, supervisor preparation, and succession planning for your municipality.
Download the blank worksheet directly. No email address is required.
Explore the Civic Leadership Academy for practical municipal leadership development.