Succession planning must reach beyond the list

I ask what the future role will require, which experiences a potential successor still needs and who owns the development plan.

The discussion should be candid without becoming a permanent label attached to a person. Roles evolve, evidence changes and development opportunities need active sponsorship. A good process keeps both business continuity and individual growth in view.

Lists persist because they are comfortable to produce and easy to present. A name in a box reassures a committee that the question has been answered, and nobody is obliged to examine whether the named person has ever led through the conditions the role will face. Incumbents can also shape the list in their own image, favouring successors who resemble them rather than the leader the next strategy needs. Without a deliberate challenge, the process rewards familiarity and confidence, and it quietly narrows the field before any real evidence has been gathered.

My practice is to write the future role before discussing any names. With the chief executive and the relevant business leader, I describe the decisions the role will carry in the coming years, the stakeholders it must manage and the conditions that would test it hardest. Only then do we look at potential successors, and for each one we record the specific experience still missing, the assignment that could supply it and the sponsor accountable for arranging it. A development plan without a named sponsor is, in my view, an aspiration rather than a plan.

Consider a regional business whose leader is expected to move on within a few years. The list may show two internal candidates described as ready in the medium term. When the future role is written out, it becomes clear that the next leader will need to manage a significant partnership and a demanding regulatory relationship, and neither candidate has done either. One can be given responsibility for a partnership negotiation now; the other may be better served by a role in a different business. The list has not changed, but the plan behind it has.

A common objection is that candid assessment will unsettle people who learn they are not first in line. The concern is real, and I take it seriously. My answer is to separate the assessment of readiness for a particular role from any judgement about a person's value to the organisation. Conversations focus on experience and evidence, which can change, rather than on fixed traits. Handled that way, candour tends to strengthen commitment, because people can see what would move them forward and who has undertaken to help them get there.

This asks something of the leadership team and the board. Executives must be willing to release strong people for stretching assignments, even when it costs their own unit some performance in the short term. The board needs to review succession more than once a year and to ask about the movement of candidates, not only their names. It also needs to accept that an external appointment is sometimes the right answer, and that preparing for that possibility is part of a responsible plan rather than a failure of internal development.

The boards I have worked with ask better succession questions when they see readiness as a trajectory rather than a label. Who is closest to ready, what experience would close the gap and who is sponsoring that experience? Those questions turn succession from an annual review into a continuing leadership responsibility.