7 Proven Succession Planning Strategies for Long-Term Business Success

Let me ask you something that might make you a little bit uncomfortable. Right now, today, who is the person in your organization ready to step into one of your most critical leadership roles if it went vacant tomorrow? Not in 6 months after a leadership development plan, not after a search with a recruiter for 90 days, but tomorrow? If the answer didn't come to you immediately, or if you named someone but immediately got a knot in your stomach because you know that they're actually not ready, then stay with us. Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch. I'm your host, Bernadette Boas. Here's what I know after 16 years of coaching executives, HR leaders, and management teams. Succession planning is one of the most talked about priorities in corporate America. And yet one of the most consistently, dangerously neglected activities. Today we're going to get into why that is. We're going to talk about the real cost to your people, your culture, and your bottom line. And I'm going to give you some concrete, actionable strategies you can take back into your team and organization starting this week.

Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms today's managers into tomorrow's powerhouse leaders. Your host, Bernadette Boas, executive coach and author, brings you into a world where the corporate grind meets personal growth and success in each and every episode. Let's do this.

Let's start with the hard truth. A study by Deloitte found that 86% of leaders believe succession planning is urgent, and yet fewer than 14% believe that they actually do it well. 14%. And according to DDI Leadership Forecast 2025, that included 2,185 HR professionals and over 10,000 leaders across 50 countries. While 75% of HR leaders prioritize internal promotion, only 20% of them have successors ready for critical roles, and just 49% of roles could be filled internally today. So know this: succession planning is not a talent shortage problem. It's a leadership preparation problem.. And the difference matters tremendously. So let's talk about 3 myths I want to debunk when it comes to succession planning. Myth number 1: Succession planning is an HR project. No, it's not. I hear this all the time. HR definitely is involved in building the succession chart, maybe even running the Nine Box. They might even identify high potentials along with the leaders of the company, and then it sits in a binder or on a spreadsheet and nobody touches it until someone resigns. And guess what? That's a little— that's way too late. The truth is succession planning is a CEO priority. It's a C-suite responsibility. HR is the architect, but the executive team has to be the builder of their future leaders. And when senior leaders aren't personally invested in identifying and developing their own successors, the whole system will collapse. And it does. It just falls apart, full stop. That's myth number 1, succession planning being an HR project. Myth number 2, we have successors, we have names on a list. Having a name on a list is not having a successor. I've worked with organizations where the succession plan was beautifully designed, color-coded, had all the information in regards to the names that they placed on that list. And then a senior leader leaves and they go straight to an executive search firm, because the person on the list, the one that they deemed ready 18 months ago, they haven't received any support, any development, any executive coaching, any stretch assignments, any visibility to the board, no sponsorship. They're just a name in the box. They are not ready. A developed, prepared, and supported human being is a successor, not a name in the box. Keep that in mind. It's critical. All right. Myth number 3: Succession planning is about the future, and we have so many fires to put out right now. I definitely understand the operational pressures that many organizations are under right now. I see it each and every day. But here's what I want you to sit with is succession planning is today's fire, and you just can't see the smoke yet. The moment a critical leader leaves and walks out the door unexpectedly, or even planned, you will wish you had started that conversation, started that development 18 months ago when you identified that name in the box. Think about the last time this may have happened. What was the impact? What was the post result of having an opening and not preparing and readying that individual for that role, how does it impact everyone and everything around them? So let's talk about why is it so hard to get this right? Because I don't believe organizations are purposely neglecting this. I believe that there's real structural and cultural barriers at play, and naming them is the first step to breaking through them. So let's talk about challenges that I see each and every day. When it comes to an organization really proactively and purposely and intentionally putting a succession plan in place that will ensure the leaders of the future. So challenge number 1, leaders don't want to develop their own replacement. Think about that. This is the one that nobody says out loud, but it's so real and it's much more common than you would ever imagine. When you ask a senior leader to actively identify and develop the person who will replace them, you're asking them to confront their own replaceability, their own ending. And that is deeply uncomfortable. I had this happen twice in the last couple of weeks, one just a couple of days ago, and having a conversation with an individual talking about their succession planning and really working with them to not only identify this person, but then to talk about what support, what coaching, what training, what development they will need in order to be able to allow someone to step out of their position, whether that's through retirement, through termination, through wanting to take on a different opportunity even within the organization. Leaders have to be considering proactively who it would be capable of replacing me, of supporting this role and moving everything that I built, so to speak, forward. But unfortunately, the insecurity of many leaders really holds a lot of information, especially for coaches, to really dig into. Those insecure leaders, they don't create opportunities or visibility opportunities for their high potentials. They don't sponsor them. They don't present them to the C-suite. They don't give them stretch assignments that would really build their readiness. Somewhere in the back of their mind, they're worried about being outshined or made redundant. But here's the irony. The leaders who develop their successors most effectively are the ones who are promoted the fastest. Think about that. The ones who develop their successors, who develop their teams, are promoted faster as a result of effectively coaching, guiding, and developing their people because they've proven in that, in that role, they've proven that they could build capability, which is the most valuable thing a senior leader can bring to an organization. But to be frank about it, as especially as a coach, it's your job. It's your job to be developing your people. It's your job to proactively coach and plan out the trajectory of each individual on your team. And if you're a senior leader, that is absolutely a must-do, no questions asked. And keep in mind, those who develop their successors effectively are the ones who get promoted faster. All right. Challenge number 2: high potentials are identified, but they're not sponsored. Again, I'll go back to you're not wanting just to put names on a list. You're not wanting to just put names on a list and then seeing what their capability is. You want to really ensure that the name on that list is then provided sponsorship, which means giving them airtime, giving them visibility, a sponsor putting their name behind that individual, opening doors, advocating for them. When they're not even in the room. And so identifying and naming a successor and sponsoring a successor are two very different things. Most organizations stop at identification. They tell a talented director, yeah, you're on the succession plan, and then they do nothing differently. That person doesn't know what their gaps are. They don't have a senior champion. They don't have access to the strategic conversations that would get them the readiness that they're going to need for that next position. They're just simply a name in a spreadsheet, a label in a system. And what happens? They get recruited away, or you put them in a position they are not ready for, and therefore it just breaks down the whole culture, the whole team, and the whole business. The third challenge that I see most often is the fact that succession is combined with replacement. Planning. Replacement planning asks, who's going to fill this seat if it becomes vacant? Succession planning asks, who do we need to be building right now to lead this organization 3, 5, 10 years from now? But yet, keep in mind, with the rapid pace of change at the moment, 3 years is actually a long stretch. You need to be looking at this more short-term with those longer-term visions in mind. Replacement planning and succession planning are two totally fundamentally different exercises that you would want to go through within your organization. And most organizations only do the first. And then they think about successor slots reactively after the case. They don't think about the future right now. Because keep in mind, we're putting out fires. Instead, they just simply think about who's going to replace this box that might open up, as opposed to what leadership capabilities do we need in that role, and therefore, how do we start training and developing and coaching the next individual that would, that would succeed someone if should they leave. Keep in mind what I said about you name someone, you might even share that with them saying, oh, I put you as my successor. You didn't do any development, any career planning, any coaching, any sponsorship, and you risk them leaving. And the risk isn't that you just lost significant talent or high potential in someone, but you're also risking that you're going to lose the confidence, the culture, the institutional knowledge, the client relationships, and the team performance all at once by failing to take the second step after putting the name in the box, by putting that plan in place to ensure that they are leveled up and ready to go when it should be needed. And lastly, research shows that it can take up to 18 months to recover from a poorly managed leadership transition. Can your business handle that? Can your business absorb that? To expand on that, let's talk about the real cost to the organization, the people, the culture and the bottom line. First would be the fact that the person who gets thrown into a position that they're not prepared for, you can only imagine overwhelm, stress, the team, the culture, the environment is drastically changed. They're making decisions that they've never operated at. They're managing relationships with the C-suite that they haven't had any engagement or exposure to. They're navigating board dynamics they've never seen before if they're a senior leader, and they're doing it without the coaching, mentoring, or support structure that would give them a fighting chance once they're in that role. We can't overlook the fact that some of them make it. Many of them don't, though. And when they don't, we blame that individual for the failure, when the failure actually belongs to the organization that promoted them unprepared. And yet you rarely see any accountability to that once that individual starts struggling and/or fails out. And by being proactive around what it is that they're going to need to be prepared for when that happens, will— would save all of that for not only that individual, but for their team and for the business. The second one would be It doesn't stop with that individual. When a leader transitions poorly, whether they leave, get promoted, or get pushed out, the team feels it immediately. Trust erodes, the uncertainty starts spreading, and your top performers will actually start considering if they need to make a job change. They start updating their resumes. And I've seen it single-handedly where a botched leadership transition takes a whole team that was once high-performing and just crashes. And they start struggling to deliver, they start struggling to engage, they start struggling to collaborate with the new leader that is unprepared, the team doesn't just lose that prior leader. They actually lose the new leader coming in. They lose the anchor that they've had, the clarity that they've had, the confidence that they've had. And so, and rebuilding that takes much more than just time. It takes resources. It takes intentional effort. On the parts of everyone. And it takes that leader recognizing that it's not just them making this transition. It's their entire team. And so if any one of these challenges, or if you have believed in any of the myths that we've talked about thus far, before we get into some concrete actionable strategies you could be taking, then I created a leadership diagnostic where it's a call between you and I for 45 minutes to discuss any of the challenges, any of the opportunities, any of the just questions you might have about dealing with succession and/or any form of development, coaching, and training of your people in order for them to not only be ready, but to be capable of being the powerhouse contributor that you need for your business. So you can go to coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall to schedule that 45-minute complimentary call. All right. And that link will be put in the show notes so you can look for it there. Now, what can you be doing right now? I don't like to just talk theory and concepts. I want to give you some actionable, concrete strategies you could be taking back to your team, back to your organization, to change the approach that you might be taking to succession planning. The first tip I would give you is make succession a C-suite conversation, not an HR deliverable. Remember, the myth was HR is the project leader of succession planning, and that's not the case. The priority is on the C-suite. And so the first thing I would want any senior leader and HR director to be doing is really getting succession planning on the executive leadership agenda, not just the annual talent review agenda, the ELT agenda, quarterly with accountability. Asking which leaders have you identified as your successors? What is their development plan? What actions have been taken thus far? Where are the gaps still existing? Because until succession is owned at the top, then it'll remain a compliance exercise rather than a strategic priority for everyone involved. All right, that's your tip number 1. Tip number 2 would be distinguish between ready now, ready in 1 to 2, and ready in 3 to 5 years. Because true succession planning is multi-horizon. You should have at least one person in each of those readiness levels for every critical role in your organization or in your immediate team. And each of those people should have a development plan that is specific, it's time-bound, it's measurable, and it's actively resourced. It's not a goal on an annual plan. It's a real plan with coaching, sponsorship, stretch assignments, and intentional development activities, along with a named executive champion beyond even the sponsor. All of this ensures that whether you need someone short-term, midterm, or longer-term, they will be ready and in a place where they can just keep the business moving forward without a lot of risk to the team, the culture, and the overall business outcome. Tip number 3 is one of the most underutilized processes, I'll call it, that you could be taking advantage of. And that is start having the conversation with the successor now. Just don't put them on a list. Actually have a conversation with them, making them aware that they have been identified as your successor or someone else's successor and what the next steps are. What that development plan looks like, what the timeline is, where others have already observed their strengths, but also areas of development gaps that they have, blind spots that they have, and therefore things that need to be worked on. And once you start having that type of conversation with your team members, let alone a successor, then they become sticky, meaning they are retained a lot longer and more effectively than any other strategy that you can come up with. If people know that there's a path for them, that there's a plan for them, that there's people paying attention for them, that they have these stretch assignments and the sponsorships and the coaching and the mentoring and the skilled training that will take them to the next level, then they're going to become a loyal retained individual for your company. All right. So that's tip number 3. Tip number 4 would be ensure that you are building exposure for them very deliberately. And again, this is a conversation I'll often have with the individual, the successor, as opposed to even their manager or the leader that identified them and put them on their succession plan, is I will share with them that they need to have a conversation. They need to go back and have a conversation to say, all right, I've been identified as your successor. This is my action plan. What opportunities can we plan out and identify over the next 6 and 12 months to give me exposure to the executive team? So I get that visibility. I work on that executive presence. I work on my communication. I understand their decision-making processes and the strategic plans that are coming down the pipeline. Give them that. Opportunity to work cross-functionally as well as directly with not only their team, but also multiple teams, multiple functions, multiple areas of the business that would secure their readiness for that job or another leadership role in the organization. So work deliberately to give them that executive exposure. Tip number 5, and I'm a little biased around this one, however,— it's a critical step in ensuring your successor will be ready and therefore you'll have a very effective, successful transition. And that is invest in their coaching beforehand, proactively, as opposed to reactively. And once the fire starts to ignite— and I do a lot of post-advancement coaching with many leaders simply because of the fact that they didn't have it before and they get into a new role, a new level level of responsibility, a new level of challenge, a new level of interaction and engagement and collaboration and strategizing with management. And all of a sudden they feel very inadequate to do that, or they don't only feel it, but that's the result that they're getting is that they're not getting the results. They're not getting the team collaboration and engagement and connection that they need. And therefore they seek coaching then. No, we want to get proactive about it. We want to help them develop the skills that they're— that is needed now, as opposed to wait until they potentially start struggling. And by giving them that executive coaching 12, 18 months prior to a transition into a critical role, it is one of the highest return on investments an organization can make. And therefore, organizations should be budgeting it, prioritizing it, and acting on it to allow for your pipeline to be full of readiness as opposed to reactiveness. Tip number 6 can often create a lively conversation, and that would be that you want to be assessing or auditing your succession plan for equity. Here's a question I want, want you to consider. Is, does your succession plan reflect the diversity of your organization and your customer base, or does it reflect who has historically has had access to sponsors and advocates? You don't want the same old, same old. You want to ensure that you're really considering the diversity of ideas and beliefs and cultures and experiences and expertise and not the same old, same old, or you're going to risk that expansion, that innovation, that creativity. And so you don't want a succession plan that simply perpetuates the same profiles, the same networks, and the same informal mentoring relationships, because that's what will continue. And that's what will continue creating the gaps that you potentially have, currently have, as opposed to filling those gaps and ensuring a wide range of profiles in your succession plan. So take time again with your ELT, potentially in your quarterlies, regular basis, assessing to ensure that you are willing to change the fabric of your organization by ensuring that you have diversity in that plan. And tip number 7 would be create a crucial role list, or a crucial role map, and review it regularly, like in that quarterly ELT, be reviewing it. And what that means is you don't want to risk a lack of readiness when you do have a vacancy. And the way to proactively prevent that is to regularly be looking at, all right, what are the 10 most critical roles in our organization? You could be looking at your team if you're a functional leader, but at the same time as an ELT, you want to be looking across the board. What are the 10 most critical roles we need to ensure we don't have any gaps or any risks in? And by identifying first those roles, then you can fill in, and again, going back to those 3 levels of readiness, ready now, ready in 1 to 2, ready in 3 to 5. And you can fill in names for each one of those readiness levels and then put that plan in place to ensure that they start working that plan. So I want to give you a challenge this week. Every episode I like to leave you with a challenge or a concrete action to take. And so this week is all around succession planning. I want you to identify one critical leadership role in your organization, whether that's your immediate team or across the board, that if that person left tomorrow, what is your plan? What would happen? Who is the person that would succeed them? What leadership development have they done, or are they being given and/or not? And where are the gaps, or where is the readiness for that?. And if by looking at that you say to yourself, all right, maybe I have a name— going back to our earlier conversation— maybe I have a name, but I haven't— I have— I don't have a plan. Well, guess what? Now you're hearing this conversation, and you can say, you know what, I think this is a good strategy to take, not only to name but also to put a plan in place, but not also to put a plan in place but to also make sure it's being acted on., and not only being acted on, but then I'm going to review it on a regular basis, maybe quarterly, with that successor to ensure that it's happening. So simply do that. Write down a critical role. Write down the name. Create a 90-day development plan for them. Have a conversation with them around it. Have them start acting on it and start measuring and make it a part of your one-on-ones with this individual. And just not only see the progress and the result that you're getting from that individual, but really feel through the result that it's giving you, the experience it's giving you, the confidence, the comfort level. The sense of mitigating risk should something occur, whether it's immediate or that short-term, 1 to 2. But really think through as well and make note of how that felt for you and then take that and pass it on to the rest of your leadership team. So all of you are working toward really developing not only a plan, but a funnel of future leaders. So let's sum it all up. We talked about succession planning. Despite it being universally acknowledged as critical, we talked about the fact that it's just severely neglected at times in many organizations. We talked and worked to debunk 3 myths that keep companies stuck, and then the challenges as to why they are stuck. We talked about the human cost to the team, to the individual, to the business. And we talk 7 concrete strategies you can be taking right now and taking back to your team and organization in order to make succession planning the critical strategic priority that it is for not only your current state of the business, but especially for your future state. Now, here's what I know from 16 years of working with organizations on exactly these challenges. Knowing what to do and knowing how to do it in your specific organization are two very different things. Every organization has a different starting point, a different culture, different political realities, different leadership team dynamics, and what works beautifully for one won't work for another. And this is exactly why I do leadership diagnostic calls. It's a complimentary 45-minute call.. And in that conversation, we'll identify your greatest leadership and succession risks going on right now, what's driving them, and a smart, practical path for moving forward that you could be taking around your specific situation. And you could do that at coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall. And let's talk to give you a path to turn that succession plan into a living, breathing competitive advantage tool for your organization. Before I let you go, if today's episode resonated with you, share it, send it to a colleague, post it on LinkedIn with your biggest takeaway and tag me so then I can read and respond to it. And I do read every single response or comment that I get. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or even our Shed the Corporate Bitch TV YouTube channel. Because reviews are the single most powerful thing that you can do to help this show reach more leaders who need these conversations as well. And I am deeply grateful for every one of them. Lastly, subscribe to the show so you don't miss an episode or one of our fabulous guests. We drop new content every Tuesday. Go be the powerhouse leader your team and organization deserve, and I'll see you next week.

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Every journey taken together is another step towards unleashing the powerhouse leader within Don't miss any of our weekly episodes. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And for those who thrive on visual content, catch us on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Wanna dive deeper with Bernadette on becoming a powerhouse leader? Visit balloffirecoaching.com to learn more about how she helps professionals, HR executives, and team leaders elevate overall team performance. You've been listening to Shedding the Corporate Bitch with Bernadette Boas. Until next time, keep shedding, keep growing, and keep leading.