It’s the end of an era when a company’s best leader resigns. Someone has to take their place, but who?
If you’re like most businesses, the truthful response is mayhem. Freak out hiring. A panicked temp appointment. Followed by six months of limbo while everyone silently asks who’s really running the place.
It doesn’t have to go that way.
Here’s the problem:
Nearly every company understands the importance of having a succession plan. Very few have actually developed one. So when that pivotal leader resigns, retires or gets poached…chaos ensues.
Succession planning can be the difference between a seamless leadership transition and one that loses a company its momentum, its customers and its best employees.
Let’s jump in!
What you’ll uncover:
- Why Succession Planning Suddenly Got Urgent
- What Succession Planning Actually Involves
- 5 Steps To Build A Plan That Works
- The Mistakes That Wreck Leadership Transitions
Why Succession Planning Suddenly Got Urgent
Leadership turnover is not slowing down.
Career site Challenger, Gray & Christmas recorded 446 CEO exits at public companies in 2025, the most they’ve seen in a year. And it’s not just CEOs who are vacating their seats. When a CEO departs, it typically drags two or three other upper-level jobs along with it.
Now here’s the uncomfortable part.
SHRM research discovered that 56% of HR professionals reported their organisation did not have a succession plan in place. Even worse, only 21% of organisations had a formal, documented succession plan. The most common reason given? They didn’t have enough time or resources.
Exits are going up. Planning remains stagnant. That delta is where costly blunders reside.
That’s why employee recruitment and selection has organically evolved into a leadership responsibility rather than an administrative task. Creating actual bench strength means properly evaluating internal talent, hiring with a long-term mindset and understanding how to recognize potential instead of pedigree. Many HR professionals who aim to effectively run these programs pursue an MSOM Degree to hone in on those workforce planning, talent evaluation and selection skills before they’re given that responsibility.
What Succession Planning Actually Involves
Succession planning is identifying positions that you can’t afford to be vacant in your company and developing people to fill them.
That’s it. No mystery.
The misconception lies often in what the job chart is not. It is not just a list of names saved in a drawer. It is not a backup chart. And certainly it is not something reserved for the CEO only.
It Starts With Employee Recruitment And Selection
Every succession plan is only as strong as the people already inside the building.
Think about it:
If employee recruitment & selection has been done as a checkbox exercise for past 5 years, there is no one ready to promote. There is no bench because no one ever constructed it.
Good employee recruiting and selection brings you people who have the capacity to grow two levels beyond the position for which they were hired. It includes structured interviews and skills testing rather than “winging it” based on intuition. And it involves being candid about which new additions to your team were hired just to fill a seat and which were brought on board to help build your future.
That single shift changes everything.
It Runs On Development, Not Job Titles
The second half of the job is development.
Selecting a successor and then sitting on your hands for three years is far worse than having no succession plan. At least if you have no plan you aren’t fooling yourself into thinking things are fine. Successors need stretch projects, access to the board and yes, real decisions with real consequences.
5 Steps To Build A Plan That Works
Ready to build one? Here is the process, stripped back to five steps.
Step 1: Find The Roles That Would Hurt Most
Put titles aside for a moment and ask yourself one question. Which positions would hurt your organization the most if they all walked away tomorrow?
Usually it’s a mix of:
- Senior leadership positions
- Revenue-driving roles
- Technical specialists with rare knowledge
- Managers who hold key client relationships
Most companies focus on just the top five. This is a huge error. Day-to-day operations happen at the director and manager level.
Step 2: Write Down What “Ready” Looks Like
Ambiguous plans don’t work. Every key position should have a documented profile of the skills, experience and behaviours the successor must truly possess.
Without that profile in place, promotions are based on personality and geography. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and twelve months down the road your organization realizes it made the wrong choice.
Step 3: Build A Bench, Not A Backup
One name per role is not a plan. It’s a gamble.
People resign. People decline the offer. People get promoted elsewhere first. Target two or three viable internal candidates per critical role. Develop a short list of external candidates as well.
Interim appointments are the canary in the coal mine. If you continuously see interim titled leaders being appointed, it’s because the bench was never constructed.
Step 4: Let People Practise Before They Need To
You wouldn’t hand someone the controls of a plane and hope for the best.
Let future leaders lead before they are leaders. Literally.
- Covering for leaders during extended leave
- Leading a cross-functional project
- Presenting to the executive team
- Owning a budget
Practice reveals gaps while there is still time to fix them.
Step 5: Review The Plan Every Single Year
A succession plan written in 2023 is already fiction. People have departed. Roles have evolved. The business has moved on.
Put a review in the calendar once a year, minimum. Twice is better.
The Mistakes That Wreck Leadership Transitions
Even good plans get sunk by the same handful of errors.
Secrecy. Keeping the plan secret from the employees involved leaves them searching for new jobs elsewhere since no one informed them about the upcoming promotion.
Cloning. Appointing a successor who will think the same way as the outgoing leader can be comfortable, but the business that the successor steps into won’t be the same business.
Approaching it as an HR initiative. Succession planning remains a paper project without executive sponsorship.
There is no handover. The transition period is completely overlooked. Someone who was parachuted in with no onboarding is being positioned to fail.
Putting It All Together
Every organisation will face leadership transitions. The only choice is if they happen as a crisis or planned event.
The companies that handle them well tend to do the same things:
- Identify the roles that matter, not just the corner offices
- Hire with employee recruitment and selection built around future potential
- Develop two or three candidates per critical role
- Give successors real practice before the handover
- Refresh the whole plan every year
None of this is difficult. It just requires dedication, and needs to begin long before anyone submits their resignation.
The best time to plan your leadership transition is during a calm Tuesday where nothing is happening.