Research Paper Exclusive Content
Why Succession Planning Fails and How to Fix It
Executive Summary
Failing Grade
Four Uncomfortable Truths
Four Pivots
Call to Action
1. Executive Summary
2. Failing Grade
3. Four Uncomfortable Truths
4. Four Pivots
5. Call to Action
Executive Summary
Succession planning was a process built to accelerate business growth, ensure continuity, increase organizational resilience, and minimize risk. But succession planning is broken. It has been for a while.
Our research included interviews with nearly 40 leaders in midsize to large global companies from a wide range of industries. We also conducted a comprehensive literature review and distilled our team’s experiences helping clients identify and develop leaders who can propel their organizations into the future.
Our research yielded these findings:
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Succession planning’s failing grade: Most leaders agree that succession planning does not deliver the business benefits required. They reported that identified successors are typically not ready to step into critical roles, forcing organizations into external searches or resulting in botched leadership transitions.
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Four uncomfortable truths about succession planning: The leaders we spoke to were vocal about the long-standing, underlying challenges of succession planning.
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Four pivots required to increase success: Although few organizations are getting the outcomes they need, some are taking actions to ensure that succession planning makes a positive impact on their business.
Despite the world of work transforming at lightning speed, the process of succession planning appears to be frozen in time, overwhelming leaders as an arduous chore and underwhelming organizations when they realize that their leaders are not ready to step into critical roles when needed. There’s been little fresh thinking on the subject of succession planning for many years. As a result, ProjectNext Leadership embarked on an exploration of why succession planning has remained a complicated, time-consuming, check-the-box exercise -- and where some organizations are getting things right.
“When a senior person leaves, it’s a s***show. It’s disruptive and takes a lot of time and energy to cover the gap if you don’t have planned succession.”
Board member of multiple public companies
Succession planning, at its core, is a strategic process designed to identify, develop, and prepare future leaders to ensure business continuity and drive sustained growth.
Succession Planning’s Failing Grade
When we asked leaders to rate how well organizations in general do succession planning, the average response was 4.8 out of 10. And when leaders turned the lens inward, on their satisfaction with their own organization’s succession planning process meeting its stated goals, the average rating was still dismally low: 5.5. In fact, nearly three-quarters of leaders in our research gave their organization a failing grade.
For additional perspective, we compared these findings to similar data collected in our 2020 high-impact leader research, which confirmed that little has changed.
Let’s explore why the struggle continues.
Four Uncomfortable Truths
As we spoke with leaders about what’s wrong, four challenges emerged, which need to be resolved if succession planning is to deliver the outcomes it promises.
“The world is moving so fast. We have to make sure we identify future leaders who can handle roles that we can in no way fully define because the future is undefined and evolving faster than we can predict with any level of certainty.”
CPO of a digital workflow automation firm
1. It is all talk, no action.
One of the most prominent themes in our research is the troublesome gap between planning and action. “Lots of process, templates, hundreds of hours spent on minute details and nothing is done about it. It doesn’t mean jack s**t if I have a grid full of leaders who are rated. What are we doing about it?” exhorted the head of executive enablement at a global transportation services firm.
Some leaders described plans being created and then left untouched because of the time required to “work the plans” or the disruption to the business created by rotating leaders to obtain the experience and expertise to become “ready now.”
Others described how their organizations have plenty of L&D programs but none that are specific for succession preparation. The result? They fall short in developing leaders to step into critical roles. The head of talent management at a global apparel retailer explained, “Learning tends to be one of the first things to get cut. Boards will say it’s important, but when things are tough there is a short-term mentality. Why spend two years assessing people and then do nothing about it?”
2. It is more about who you know than what you know.
Succession planning in many organizations still comes down to internal politics and networks, essentially discounting the objective, business-focused goals that supposedly drive it. The leaders we spoke to described succession decisions that often reflect personal interests and biases of top leaders, rather than objective measures of potential or capabilities.
In some organizations, talent hoarding elevates functional interests above the enterprise’s needs, as senior leaders focus on their own goals (and, often, compensation). They strive to hold on to their high performers to help guarantee results while limiting the mobility and experience that those team members need to become ready for more senior roles.
Others suffer from senior leaders ignoring carefully curated lists of leaders based on role requirements and performance data to identify “mini-me” replacements. And in some cases, leaders in critical roles appear reluctant to participate in the process. The former global head of L&D for an e-commerce and logistics services firm explained: “Senior leaders don’t like the idea that they can be replaced. They want to be indispensable.”
3. It has not kept up with the times.
Whereas the pace of business transformation has accelerated, and the need to deploy talent to key roles has increased in the last decade, approaches to succession remain stuck in the past. For example, regardless of multiple strategic pivots throughout the year, many organizations maintain a once-a-year effort, as the director of executive development at a global online advertising and search company admitted: “We put our succession planning work on the shelf for 364 days of the year.”
Another dated practice is focusing on established role descriptions rather than rapidly evolving leadership skills and future requirements. The head of executive development of a global energy corporation shared: “The criteria of what we’re looking for in each role are unclear. We don’t have success profiles for each job.”
And even the leaders who believe that their approaches to succession have kept up with the times acknowledged a lack of coordinated systems and technology to facilitate the process. Spreadsheets and slide decks remain the go-to tools, and succession planning often happens without the integration of performance, career, and other talent management insights. One retail giant, according to its director of executive coaching, is resorting to building their own app: “The app will enable leadership to add and take off names on succession slates, keeping the slates updated with a lighter touch. We do talent reviews quarterly, and updates to succession plans are a key output. If succession plans are not kept current, there is no point in doing them. Annual doesn’t work; things change too fast.”
4. It is driven by process, not strategy.
Despite agreement that succession planning is critical to continued growth, resilience, and risk mitigation, many of the leaders we spoke to lamented that it’s more of a toothless check-the-box exercise that is disconnected from strategic planning. Only a few organizations could articulate a clear “why” for their succession planning activities. Even those that say they do, don’t always walk their talk.
The talent planning lead of a global automotive manufacturer shared the oft-cited challenge that business leaders abdicate responsibility for succession planning: “The business should drive it. The minute HR alone owns succession, it’s dead in the water. If the business drives it and is responsible for it, you’ve won. Succession planning should be a part of, not apart from, the lifecycle of the business.”
And like many processes that have no link to strategy, succession planning often suffers from a lack of focus, trying to address too many roles, with too many activities done poorly. The leaders we spoke to are trying to change this, as the XXX leader in an XXX organization that is becoming more strategic in preparing future leaders, explained: “We’ve narrowed down our focus to a small number of critical roles that heavily impact the future of our business. We need to get that right first.”
Four Pivots Required to Increase Success
Despite the bleak state of succession planning painted above, our research suggests that picking a few things to do differently can make a significant difference. Combining the insights from this study and experience working with clients who have cracked the code, we have identified four shifts in how firms of all sizes, situations, and maturity can ratchet up their succession practices.
“We found leaders were rarely coded as 'ready now' and actually became less ready over time. The company was growing faster than our people were. Succession planning was like talent accounting. It never led to anything. So we put in more robust conversations about the business and how roles would change. We began to talk about drivers of change and how those would impact who should be considered successors.”
Director of executive development at a global online advertising and search company
Pivot 1:
From replacement planning to future proofing.
To achieve its potential as an accelerator in today’s rapidly evolving business world, succession needs to be about what your business needs now and in the future. At a minimum, shift the conversations from merely filling existing roles to meeting requirements dictated by the organization’s strategic plan. Better yet, as uncertainty prevails, envision alternative organizational paths – and the impact they might have on your talent decisions.
How to do it?
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Ask “What leadership capabilities are needed to achieve the goals of the business?” Instead of asking “Who’s going to replace Bob?” discuss “How is Bob’s role going to change?” Then revisit these requirements often to reflect strategic shifts.
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Try scenario-driven succession as described below to shift from “Is this person ready for this role?” to “Which leaders are most ready given these possible ways in which our future strategy could unfold?”
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Implement assessment tools that reflect evolving requirements to supplement data you have on past performance. And keep competency models simple, argues the former CHRO of a large real estate investment trust: “Don’t waste a ton of energy on this, because what you do with the data is more important.”
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Consider the most likely two to three “big bet” organization scenarios in the next 3-5 years.
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Identify the leadership requirements for each scenario.
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Identify leader readiness for each scenario: “Who is best suited to lead if we take this path?”
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Determine development strategies to build leadership capabilities and fill the gaps.
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Pivot 2:
From calibration to preparation.
Our research suggests that organizations typically invest 80% of their efforts in analysis and planning and a mere 20% in development. To ensure that leaders are “ready now” when needed, that ratio needs to flip. The head of executive development at a global energy firm agrees: “If we took even some of the energy and time we all put into the succession planning process and applied it to doing good talent planning and development, we’d be in a much better place.” It’s time to aggressively prepare leaders for the future by building a broad-based leadership pipeline below the critical roles.
How to do it?
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Craft, implement, and track individualized development plans that reflect leaders’ growth interests and include mentoring, role-specific development, and opportunities to acquire experience and expertise.
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Provide career development opportunities to help leaders clarify what they want and ensure that their aspirations align with your big plans for them. Our 2025 Leadership Insights research found that the promotion pathway is no longer the obvious choice, with an increasing number of leaders saying “no thanks” to leadership opportunities with more responsibilities.
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Invest in onboarding to ensure successful leadership transitions. Although this may seem like an obvious step, several leaders we interviewed admitted to succession ending with placement in roles. Our past studies have also revealed that director-and-above leaders rarely receive the type of support that they need at these critical pivot points.
The 9 Box Model, which evaluates people on performance and potential, dates back to the 1970s. It is used widely in succession planning, but our research revealed increasing dissatisfaction with it as an artificial construct that isn’t comprehensive enough, creates a lot of work, and railroads people who can’t lose the labels they’re assigned.
The leaders we spoke to are moving toward models that are more future focused and skill based. The head of talent and leadership at a global engineering and consulting services firm explained: “The 9 Box is an outdated concept. We need a more fluid and agile system. We've just developed a new talent differentiation model that takes performance into account but takes out potential and replaces it with some more meaningful definitions." Another leader, the head of talent at a global payments and financial services company, shared: “We use a four-segment model instead of the 9 Box: Top talent, emerging talent, core talent, talent in review.” And the CHRO of a medical products company emphasized how their definition of potential shapes their decisions: “It’s composed of ambition, mobility and capability. That way, the person’s ambitions are taken into account.”
The implication here: It’s time to revisit many of the long-standing aspects of succession planning that fall into the “that’s the way we’ve always done it” category. If tools like the 9 Box Model or a practice like once-a-year succession plan reviews aren’t delivering results, try something new.
“Great organizations build relationships with talent well before they need them.”
Head of talent management at a global apparel retailer
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Pivot 3:
From senior leaders as talent assemblers to leadership producers.
Our research indicates that many organizations are buying senior leadership talent rather than building it, as the pressure for results and rapid growth tempts the best-intentioned executives to focus on making it to the next quarter. To be succession-strong, however, organizations need senior leaders to go beyond recruiting, developing, and retaining talented leaders to drive just their own part of the business. Senior leaders need to build the leadership pipeline with an eye to the future of the entire enterprise. It requires shifts in leadership mindsets and organizational practices.
How to do it?
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Encourage leaders in critical roles to think like executive recruiters. A human resource executive at a fast-growing life sciences company explained that at a minimum: “We ask leaders to reflect on the experience and skillsets required in their own roles and identify potential successors inside or outside the organization.”
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Drive accountability for succession planning and development. This step requires executive commitment to look for leaders who have demonstrated the capability to learn quickly, not just those who have useful experiences. It also means putting people in appropriate development programs when they are identified in the leadership pipeline to ensure that they have the skills, experience, and network when they’re tapped.
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Rework senior leader compensation and incentives to discourage the functional talent hoarding that undermines a culture of talent mobility. This tactic can be challenging to implement but reaps benefits beyond succession planning as businesses become more dependent on leaders collaborating across silos.
“Go deeper into the organization. Who is the emerging talent? Give them stretch projects, groom them so they are ready at a new pivot in the business. Give the director-plus level of leader visibility. Help them move into different roles or grow new parts of the business. Don’t focus only on the leaders who report to the CEO. The gap between the people at C-level and just below is big.”
Former senior vice president, global information technology firm
“Good succession planning is all about execution. The key is to take the discussions and plans and do something about it."
Head of talent at a global beverage company
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Pivot 4:
From exercise to execution.
To move from merely maintaining a list of names to purposeful implementation of plans, the HRBP of a biotechnology firm stressed it’s “like anything else in business -- you need clear accountability, with well-defined roles and objectives that everyone knows are the target.” Business ownership with HR support and facilitation was heralded as the game changer. And it’s not necessary to overhaul everything at once.
How to do it?
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Target efforts on fewer strategic, critical roles so that you have the bandwidth and focus to take effective action.
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Increase succession management touchpoints. Executives in the most successful organizations in our study meet quarterly to review impending openings and the readiness of leaders to take on new responsibilities. Some even make this discussion part of their regular monthly agenda. This is an “always doing succession” approach rather than “plan and implement.”
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Increase transparency to drive accountability of everyone responsible to execute any plans identified behind closed doors.
Yes…with a few caveats. The organizations that have the best results strive for the right degree of transparency. At a minimum, they communicate a message of commitment to leaders like, “We’d like to invest in you as we see a bright future ahead together.” They also try to involve the talent being “managed.” That transparency helps drive retention of high potentials, leaders whose ambitions align with those of the organization, and targeted leadership development activities to build needed skill sets. Yet most organizations are secretive for reasons that may belie the challenge of holding leaders accountable for high performance or a culture that’s “too nice” (read “feedback averse”).
To become more transparent, be prepared to field questions from reluctant senior leaders like: “Will this knowledge drive competition among leaders?” “How do we tell a leader they’ve been removed from the list?” “How will this affect leaders not on the list?” “What if a role doesn’t open up as expected?” “How will we defend an external hire?”
Transparency requires courage and culture change. One of the boldest approaches we heard was the message of “employability not employment” at a global beverage company: “You may not get the CMO role at our company, but you might become a CMO somewhere else. That would be a beautiful outcome for us.”
Aligning Tools and Data
Many of the leaders in our study voiced frustration with technology and access to data. Sure, it’s important to close obvious gaps in technology, but don’t wait for the ideal tool. Plenty of organizations in our study are successfully managing leadership succession despite the inadequacies of existing HCM platforms. Collaborate across performance management, career development, and talent mobility practices. Doing so can facilitate succession planning by providing useful data and ensuring that leaders continue to build the most critical skills for your organization’s future.
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Your Call to Action
“Your organization’s biggest constraint on growth is your leadership capacity and talent. If you lose a member of that team, you need to fill that gap. If the succession planning process isn’t building your capability, you’re losing as well.”
Board member of multiple public companies
Don’t wait, exhorts a board member of multiple public companies: “It’s a fallacy that you have to be a Fortune 500 company to do succession planning. You just need to scale it appropriately. Companies don’t do it early enough.”
As you take stock of your succession practices and your firm’s strategies for thriving into the future, use the insights of this report to identify steps that provide the greatest traction in building a pipeline of leaders who are ready, willing, and able to step into critical leadership roles. Your strategy needs to reflect your organization. Start small, experiment purposefully, learn, and build from there. Collaborate across the enterprise to cultivate strong people practices and a culture of talent mobility. Approach leadership development and succession as an “always on” business strategy instead of a people practice that involves separate planning and execution.
When you take this approach, you’ll be positioned to reap the rewards that succession planning is meant to deliver: stability and resilience; innovation and growth; results now and for many years to come.
Authors
Molly Rosen
Co-CEO and Co-Founder, ProjectNext Leadership
Molly Rosen is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of ProjectNext Leadership, a global firm dedicated to developing exceptional executive leaders and high-performing teams. With over 20 years of experience coaching leaders across tech, entertainment, and biotech, Molly specializes in guiding executives through critical transitions and preparing them to lead transformational change. Her work with Fortune 500 companies focuses on building sustainable, diverse, and future-ready leadership pipelines. She shares her expertise on topics like leading across silos and navigating matrixed organizations in publications such as Harvard Business Review, The Globe & Mail, Authority Magazine, and others.
Jeff Rosenthal
Co-CEO and Co-Founder, ProjectNext Leadership
Jeff Rosenthal is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of ProjectNext Leadership, a global firm specializing in executive leadership and team development. With over 30 years of experience, Jeff partners with leading organizations to prepare senior executives and their teams for critical leadership transitions. A recognized thought leader, Jeff frequently speaks on executive development, leadership transformation, and future-focused succession strategies. He contributes his insights on topics like succession planning and building high-performing leadership teams to publications such as Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The Globe & Mail, and others.
Kate Casolaro
Director, ProjectNext Leadership
Kate Casolaro is a Director at ProjectNext Leadership. She is the lead designer behind many of our cohort development programs and senior team offsites, creating experiences that are both impactful and memorable. In addition to her client work, Kate leads many of ProjectNext Leadership’s research and product development efforts.