The Succession Planning Mistake Most Small Businesses Make #leadership #successionplanning

17 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, Chrissy Myers discusses a common succession‑planning error among fast‑growing small businesses: hiring external candidates who already possess leadership experience and placing them in customer‑service roles as a fast track to management. She explains that while these hires bring ready‑made skills, they bypass the need to train or develop internal employees, which means the business misses the opportunity to groom existing staff for future leadership. Myers points out that this approach reflects poor succession planning because it neglects the long‑term development of current employees, especially when rapid growth makes it hard to think ahead and prepare internal talent for promotion.

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If you've brought this person in recognizing that they have leadership skills, recognizing that you probably are going to want to promote them into a management position, maybe you see them, you bring them in as a customer service person. Okay. You let them walk the walk with your customer service team, but they've been a customer service manager before. Okay. And you know that they have the skills to do that inherently. They've got them. You don't have to train them. You don't have to develop them where you would with a current employee. They don't know that you see those things that you were looking for those things, that you don't have time to train them, to professionally develop them. In some ways, I'd say that's bad on you. In some ways, I'd say you're not doing very good succession planning. But it is what it is. And especially when we're growing fast, it's very hard to think that far ahead and start grooming people that are already employees to step up.