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That model is increasingly inadequate. The CEO mandate has expanded well beyond operating performance, requiring leaders who can navigate volatility, transformation, stakeholder scrutiny, and ambiguity. At the same time, confidence in current succession approaches remains low: only 8% of boards plan CEO succession more than five years in advance, and only 44% believe their succession processes will yield a successful candidate.
Russell Reynolds’ New CEO Progression Blueprint reframes succession as a long-term leadership and governance capability. The goal is not simply to identify a successor. It is to build a stronger system for defining the future CEO mandate, expanding the field of options, assessing and developing talent with evidence, selecting with rigor, and supporting the new CEO through transition.
The practical promise of progression is simple: more CEO optionality, better evidence, stronger leadership readiness, and greater confidence before the moment of decision arrives.
The board ultimately owns the CEO transition process and outcome: defining the criteria for the next CEO, selecting the successor, working with the incumbent CEO to ensure a successful transition, and instilling confidence in the appointment. Yet many boards are being asked to make that decision without the long-range preparation the moment requires. Only 8% of boards plan CEO succession more than five years in advance, and only 44% believe their succession processes will yield a successful candidate.
That gap makes CEO succession more than a replacement decision. It is a readiness test for the whole leadership system. True board readiness requires more than an emergency successor or a familiar internal name. It requires a system that creates real choice, objective evidence, and confidence before succession becomes urgent.
The strongest boards move from episodic succession planning to continuous progression. They start early, define the future CEO profile against where the business is going, ensure visibility into a broader field of internal and external options, and use objective evidence to guide assessment, development, and final selection.
Questions to consider:
If the CEO transition accelerated, would we have real options?
If the strategy shifted, would our CEO profile still be valid?
Are we judging readiness through evidence, or through familiarity and exposure?
If the new CEO were appointed tomorrow, would they be set up to succeed?
Explore the full article to learn how boards can build optionality, confidence, and continuity before the decision moment arrives.
For incumbent CEOs, succession can be sensitive. It naturally raises questions about timing, control, legacy, and the future of the enterprise beyond one’s own tenure. But CEO progression is better understood as one of the highest forms of enterprise stewardship: building the leadership depth, bench strength, and organizational resilience that allow the company to perform and transform over time.
The stakes are rising. The CEO role has expanded amid volatility, transformation, and stakeholder scrutiny, yet only 38% of CEOs are confident in their board’s ability to strategize leadership succession. For CEOs, that creates an opportunity to help turn succession from a sensitive, late-stage topic into a constructive leadership-building discipline.
The CEO plays a critical role in helping the board understand internal talent readiness, ensuring HR collaborates in a rigorous assessment and development process, offering ongoing feedback on candidates’ progress, and contributing independent judgment to the process. The CEO’s role is not to choose the successor. It is to help create the conditions for the board to make the best possible decision.
Questions to consider:
Am I helping the board see the full internal leadership field?
Are we building future CEO readiness, or simply identifying who looks ready today?
Does our CEO success profile reflect the future business, not just my own path to the role?
Am I building the leadership legacy I want to leave?
Explore the full article to learn how CEOs can help strengthen enterprise capability and build more credible future CEO options over time.
While the board owns the CEO decision, the CHRO plays a critical enabling role in making the process disciplined, informed, and actionable. This role is especially important when confidence in succession systems is uneven: only about half of board directors are confident in their ability to design a successful C-level succession strategy.
CEO progression connects strategy, governance, talent intelligence, assessment, development, and transition. CHROs are often the connective tissue that helps the board and CEO turn those elements into a coherent system. They can help translate future strategy into leadership requirements, broaden the view of internal talent, provide input into rigorous assessment, support targeted development, and advise on the human and organizational dynamics that often determine whether succession succeeds.
This is where CHROs can create real leverage. Succession should not only identify ready-now candidates. It should help build more credible options over time, while anticipating internal candidate management, communication risk, retention, leadership team stability, and the conditions required for the incoming CEO to succeed.
Questions to consider:
Are we translating future strategy into clear CEO leadership requirements?
Are we giving the board a broad enough view of internal talent?
Are we judging readiness through objective evidence and development, or through reputation and exposure?
Are we prepared for the human and organizational dynamics of transition?
Explore the full article to learn how CHROs can help build CEO optionality, leadership readiness, and transition confidence before the need becomes urgent.
Margot McShane co-leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Board & CEO Advisory practice globally, and is the co-founder of RRA Artemis. She is based in San Francisco.
Hetty Pye is a senior member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Board & CEO Advisory practice, and is the co-founder of RRA Artemis. She is based in London.
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