Co-authored with Margaret Wilson of Tandem Partners
Sometimes succession is truly a surprise. Other times it only feels like one. The difference matters, because what you do next and what you should have done before are not the same.
There are moments when leadership changes overnight. A health crisis abruptly sidelines the CEO. A board forces an immediate transition. A scandal makes continued leadership impossible. In these situations, organizations don’t have the luxury of developmental work. They must stabilize quickly. This is crisis leadership, and it prioritizes steadiness over strategy. But most succession doesn’t happen this way.
More often, a transition feels sudden because the organization wasn’t prepared. The signals were there, and the timing was foreseeable. What was missing was readiness. A successor was named but not fully empowered. Decision making still ran through one leader. The board discussed succession without planning for governance beyond the founder. When transition finally began, it felt abrupt not because it was unpredictable, but because leadership hadn’t been built into the system itself.
When people think about succession, they usually focus on the CEO role. Who will take over. Whether a successor is ready. When the handoff will occur. While critical, CEO succession is a surface transition. The deeper question is whether leadership has been built across the organization. Succession isn’t a seat change. It’s a system change.
Two different organizational capabilities come into play. Crisis capability allows an organization to stabilize itself when leadership disappears overnight. Development capability ensures leadership is never concentrated in one role to the point of destabilizing the system. Organizations build development capability over time through bench strength, successor exposure, shared decision rights, governance readiness, and the systems and processes that reduce reliance on any single leader.
When succession feels chaotic, leaders often blame the transition. But the instability probably began well before. Succession exposes it quickly. Stakeholders begin questioning the successor’s legitimacy. People grow watchful. Internal positioning intensifies. What people experience as succession shock often reflects how dependent the organization has been on one leader.
Sometimes succession truly is a surprise. Organizations will always face moments beyond their control. But instability is preventable. You can build leadership capability beyond any single leader, deepen your bench, strengthen governance, and create the systems and structures that keep the organization steady when leadership changes.
Succession shouldn’t test whether one person can be replaced. It should reveal that leadership already exists beyond them.
