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44%of board directors think their CEO succession plan will result in an effective candidate Source: Board Director Behavior and Culture Study, RRA
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Succession planning has traditionally worked towards a relatively knowable destination: a defined role, a clear view of what success looks like, and a small number of leaders being prepared to step into it.
But the destination is becoming harder to predict.
Leadership roles are changing. Strategies are shifting. New technologies are reshaping businesses and work. The leader an organization expects to need in three or five years may look very different from the one it ultimately needs.
That creates a new succession risk: organizations can spend years preparing a leader for a future that no longer exists by the time they get there.
That uncertainty makes succession harder. And it also makes starting earlier more important.
When organizations cannot know exactly which leader they will need, they need options: different leaders, with different strengths, experiences and potential, who can develop as the business does. Building that kind of optionality takes time, which is why the best succession strategies start five years before an expected leadership departure.
Yet succession often starts late. Our research shows that only 33% of leaders describe their succession practices as “proactive.” When it comes to CEO succession specifically, it reveals that only 8% of directors plan more than five years ahead.
By the time a transition becomes urgent, there may be enough time to choose between the leaders available—but too little time to create better options. Perhaps unsurprisingly, only 44% of board directors believe their CEO succession process will yield a successful candidate.
Starting earlier is essential. But leadership optionality also requires a fundamental rethink of how succession strategies are developed in the first place.
Here, we explore why traditional succession strategies often narrow leadership options, and how organizations can build broader, more adaptable pipelines that give them greater choice for whatever comes next.
Leadership advisor, Industrials and Natural Resources Practice, RRA
Across our research, a consistent pattern is emerging: the demands on leadership are changing faster than many of the structures and practices designed to support it.
33% of leaders describe their C-suite succession practices as proactive
26% of leaders describe their C-suite succession practices as informal
52% of boards are confident in their ability to design a successful C-level succession strategy
8% of boards plan more than five years in advance of CEO succession
44% of boards feel their CEO succession plan will result in an effective candidate
RETHINK YOUR SUCCESSION STRATEGY
Issues increasingly stack and interact, compounding complexity. Leaders must navigate multiple interconnected consequences at once.
Disruption is arriving faster as innovation cycles compress. The opportunities for those who move early are growing, as are the risks for those who do not.
Business-critical issues now cut across business units, requiring leaders to solve problems together that no single function can own.
Leaders must deliver short-term performance while making decisions whose impact may take years or decades to materialize.
Leaders face increasingly diverse—and often conflicting—stakeholder expectations. Alignment is rarely possible, while social media can amplify disagreement.
Starting succession earlier creates more time to build a strong leadership pipeline. But time alone does not guarantee optionality.
Most succession strategies look strongest just before they are implemented. The role has been defined. Candidates have been identified and assessed. Readiness ratings have been agreed. A preferred successor is likely already emerging.
But an organization can have a detailed succession strategy and still find itself choosing from a field that is too small, too similar or built around assumptions that no longer reflect what the business needs. The plan creates confidence because a decision can be made—not necessarily because the organization has the right range of choices to make it from.
Three limitations are particularly important.
DEVELOP A FUTURE-READY SUCCESSION STRATEGY
Traditional succession is designed to answer a question: Who should come next?
But when organizations cannot know exactly what leadership they will need in the future, answering that question is not enough. They need a system that continually creates options.
That requires a shift from succession to progression: a long-term, continuous approach to identifying, developing and maintaining a broad pipeline of leaders who can meet different future needs.
The goal is optionality: leaders, with different strengths, experiences and potential, who give the organization credible choices as the future becomes clearer.
Succession should begin long before a transition is expected. Starting early gives organizations time to identify a broader range of leaders, understand their potential and develop them before the field needs to narrow.
That means looking beyond the obvious candidates. High-visibility executives naturally enter succession conversations early, while less conventional leaders—or those deeper in the organization—can remain overlooked.
Progression keeps the aperture wider for longer. It considers a broad range of internal talent while maintaining an informed view of external leaders, allowing new candidates to enter the field as business needs and individual potential become clearer.
A future-ready pipeline cannot be built around one fixed view of the role. Organizations need to keep revisiting what critical leadership roles may require as strategy, markets and business conditions change.
Development needs to be equally dynamic. Rather than preparing leaders narrowly for one next job, give them experiences that expand the range of roles and circumstances in which they could succeed: broader enterprise exposure, different functions or markets, greater stakeholder complexity and opportunities to lead through unfamiliar challenges.
This also requires looking beyond readiness today to understand how leaders are developing over time—their trajectory, growth potential and ability to take on challenges beyond those they have already encountered.
Succession should not switch on when a vacancy appears and switch off once it is filled.
Roles change. Leaders develop. Strategy moves. People leave. New talent emerges. The pipeline therefore needs to be continually reassessed against what the organization may need next.
That means regularly refreshing future success profiles, reassessing the range and readiness of leaders in the pipeline, continuing development and bringing new options into the field.
An appointment should trigger the next cycle of progression, not bring the process to an end.
• If our leadership needs changed tomorrow, would our succession bench give us genuinely different options?
Look beyond the number of successors on the plan and consider whether they bring enough range in experience, strengths and potential to meet different future needs.
• Who could become a credible successor if we gave them the opportunity—and who are we currently overlooking?
Consider whether visibility, conventional career paths or early judgments about readiness are determining who receives the experiences and exposure needed to progress.
• How much of our succession strategy is based on assumptions that may no longer hold?
Revisit critical roles, success profiles and readiness assessments regularly to ensure they continue to reflect where the business is going, rather than where it has been.
• Are we running succession as a continuous system—or activating it when a transition approaches?
Look at what happens between vacancies: whether the pipeline is continually refreshed, leaders continue developing and new options are brought into consideration as circumstances change.
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