Succession Planning

Succession planning is the organizational process of identifying and developing internal talent to fill critical roles when they become vacant — ensuring leadership and capability continuity without catastrophic dependency on any single individual. It addresses two types of risk: planned transitions (retirements, planned moves) where there is time to prepare replacements, and unplanned transitions (sudden departure, health emergency) where ready-now successors are the only protection against significant organizational disruption. Effective succession planning requires organizational honesty that is politically uncomfortable: most succession discussions produce overly positive assessments of candidate readiness, and the most common failure is a plan full of 'ready in 1 to 2 years' assessments that remain unchanged year after year without the development investments that would actually accelerate readiness.