Organizations take up to 18 months to recover from poor leadership transitions. The difference: replacement planning fills a vacant seat reactively, while succession planning builds leadership capabilities before you need them. Most companies do the first and skip the second.
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Research shows that it can take up to 18 months to recover from a poorly managed leadership transition. The third challenge that I see most often is the fact that succession is combined with replacement planning. Replacement planning asks, who's gonna fill this seat if it becomes vacant? Succession planning asks, who do we need to be building right now to lead this organization? 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.
