The Myth of the “Ready-Now” Leader
Most succession plans list a handful of names for key roles. On paper, it looks reassuring. In reality, many of those people have never been tested in the true heat of leadership. The gap between “potential” and “prepared” is where businesses stumble and lose valuable time.
Moving Beyond the Emergency File
For many companies, succession planning is treated like an insurance policy—only opened when someone leaves. By then, the search is rushed, transitions are messy, and teams often lose focus and momentum. Key relationships can fray, decision-making slows, and the ripple effects are felt across the organization. Smart organizations treat it as a living, breathing strategy that evolves with the business.
The Succession Crunch in India
In India, the stakes are even higher. 88% of entrepreneurs trust their children to take over, but only 7% of next-gen leaders feel obligated to do so. With family businesses generating nearly 79% of India’s GDP and $1.5 trillion in wealth transfer underway, succession can’t rely on assumptions or inheritance—it must be actively built.
Tailoring Leadership Readiness by Company Size.
Leadership preparation isn’t one-size-fits-all. The way a 50-person startup grooms its future leaders looks very different from how a 50,000-employee enterprise does it. The smartest organizations adapt their approach to their scale, resources, and talent pipelines:
- Small Companies: With flatter structures and fewer formal programs, small businesses can give future leaders high visibility and cross-functional experience early. A marketing lead might also run product launches, or a finance head might spearhead strategic partnerships—blurring lines to build versatility.
- Mid-Sized Companies: These organizations often have enough resources to offer structured development without the bureaucracy of large enterprises. They can create rotational assignments, mentor-matching with senior leaders, and targeted “crisis simulations” to test decision-making in controlled but realistic scenarios.
- Large companies: Can design strong succession pipelines, but the challenge is cutting through bureaucracy. Giving future leaders real accountability early—owning budgets, teams, or market decisions—prepares them to lead decisively when the role becomes theirs.
Succession is Not Just for the C-Suite.
A CEO change may grab headlines, but the real operational risk often lies much deeper in the organization. Losing a head of product, a plant manager, or a regional sales leader can cause just as much disruption—sometimes more—because these roles hold the operational knowledge and relationships that keep the business moving day to day.
In progressive succession planning, the focus isn’t only on replacing the top job; it’s on building continuity for every role whose absence could stall performance, unsettle teams, or weaken customer trust.
Rethinking Leadership Readiness.
Tenure, seniority, and loyalty once served as reliable markers for leadership potential — but in today’s business climate, they can be misleading. True readiness is less about time served and more about the breadth and intensity of real-world exposure. The leaders who transition smoothly into top roles often share a few telling characteristics:
- Pattern recognition built over varied contexts — they’ve navigated different market cycles, company sizes, and operating models, giving them a wider lens to interpret complexity.
- Decision-making tested under visible stakes — not just in safe, internal projects, but in scenarios where the outcome shaped revenue, reputation, or investor confidence.
- Credibility across the organization — earned through direct engagement with frontline teams, not just through polished presentations to the board.
Selecting the next leader isn’t about finding someone who looks ready on paper — it’s about identifying the person who has already operated in conditions that mirror the future challenges of the business.
Making It a Continuous Cycle.
Annual reviews are too static for a world where markets, technologies, and customer expectations shift in months, not years. Forward-looking companies weave succession planning into the rhythm of business itself:
- Refreshing the talent map in real time — candidate pools aren’t just updated annually, but as soon as market priorities, strategy, or key metrics shift.
- Building capabilities ahead of demand — identifying not only today’s leadership skills, but those that will matter two, five, or even ten years out, and starting development before they become urgent gaps.
- Embedding leadership trials into normal workflows — giving emerging leaders visible projects, P&L responsibility, and multi-stakeholder negotiations as part of their everyday remit.
When succession becomes a living system instead of a once-a-year checklist, leadership changes stop being emergencies.
Case Study: Nike’s Distributed Leadership Transition
When Nike’s longtime President of Consumer, Product, and Brand, Heidi O’Neill, announced her departure after 26 years, the company didn’t simply appoint a single successor. Instead, Nike deliberately divided her role across multiple internal leaders. Amy Montagne stepped up as President of Consumer and Sport, Phil McCartney took charge of Innovation, Design & Product Creation, and Nicole Graham assumed the Chief Marketing Officer role.
This strategic move wasn’t just about filling a vacancy—it was a sculpted response to minimize single-point dependency and maintain momentum across critical functions. By promoting from within and distributing leadership, Nike preserved institutional knowledge, ensured business continuity, and aligned its structure with its growth priorities.
