Succession Planning

Leadership Succession

Strong leaders are built on a timeline, not discovered at the moment you need them. In partnership with leaders, I identify successors using the 9-box and other assessment frameworks, mapping performance against potential to see clearly who's ready now, who's close, and who needs a different kind of support. From there, I build tailored development plans to accelerate readiness, tracking and adjusting progress over time.

High Potential
Low Performance
Demonstrates characteristics associated with future leadership potential, but current performance is below expectations. Requires assessment to understand whether performance gaps stem from role fit, experience, development needs, or other factors before being considered for advancement.

High Potential
Moderate Performance
Demonstrates strong potential for broader leadership responsibility but is not yet consistently delivering at a high level in the current role. May need additional experience, development, or time to translate potential into sustained performance.

High Potential
High Performance
Consistently delivers strong leadership results and demonstrates the capability, aspiration, and capacity to succeed in significantly broader or more complex leadership roles. A strong candidate for accelerated development and succession consideration.

Moderate Potential
Low Performance
Currently performs below leadership expectations while demonstrating some capacity for future growth. Requires focused development and sustained performance improvement before broader leadership responsibilities should be considered.

Moderate Potential
Moderate Performance
Reliably meets leadership expectations and demonstrates some capacity for additional responsibility. May progress into broader leadership roles with targeted development and demonstrated growth.

Moderate Potential
High Performance
Consistently delivers strong results as a leader and may be capable of taking on additional scope or responsibility, but currently demonstrates less potential for significantly broader or more complex leadership roles.

Low Potential
Low Performance
Performance does not consistently meet expectations in the current leadership role, with limited evidence of capacity for broader leadership responsibilities. Requires performance improvement and evaluation of continued fit for the leadership role.

Low Potential
Moderate Performance

Reliably performs the core requirements of the current leadership role but demonstrates limited potential for broader or substantially more complex leadership responsibilities. Development should generally focus on strengthening effectiveness in the current role.

Low Potential
High Performance
Highly effective in the current leadership role but demonstrates limited capacity, aspiration, or readiness for substantially broader leadership responsibilities. Often provides significant value through continued performance and expertise at the current level.

Learn about my role in succession planning and the impact it delivered →

Case Study

Rate a successor yourself. Try the AI-powered Leadership Succession Calibration Grid →

AI Tools

Critical Role Succession

Not every role needs a succession plan, but the ones that would break the business if vacant absolutely do. I build critical role succession through five steps:

Identify the roles whose loss would create the most risk
Assess internal talent against what each role actually requires
Develop targeted plans to close the gaps
Retain the people already filling or preparing for that role
Review progress on a regular cadence so the plan stays current as the business changes

Case Study

Get in touch