If succession planning has been sitting on your HR to-do list—acknowledged, but not urgent— now is the time to prioritize it.
Succession planning is about future-proofing. It’s also about managing immediate business risk.
Organizations across industries are feeling the impact of leadership gaps, thin pipelines, and shifting role requirements in real time. The question is no longer whether you need a succession plan. It’s whether yours is strong enough to support the business you’re trying to run today and the one you’re trying to build next.
Here’s the case for why succession planning deserves sharper focus right now.
Leadership Risk is No Longer Hypothetical
For a few years, many organizations experienced an unusual kind of stability at the top. Leaders stayed put through uncertainty. Retirement plans were delayed. Movement slowed.
That’s changing.
We’re now seeing a release of that pent-up movement. Retirements, exits, and internal shifts are happening more frequently and often with less notice. The result? Organizations are being forced into reactive decisions at exactly the wrong moment.
Succession planning, in this context, is about avoiding disruption. It ensures that when a critical role opens—planned or not—you’re not starting from zero. You have options. You have insight. And you can move with confidence instead of urgency.
The “Thin Bench” Problem is Real
One of the most common and uncomfortable realizations organizations are having right now is this: there isn’t a ready successor for key roles.
Look one level down from your executive team and across your critical roles and ask:
- Who is ready now?
- Who could be ready in 1–2 years?
- Who is even on the path?
Too often, the answer is: not enough depth or no one at all. By the time that becomes visible, you’re already in a reactive position.
This didn’t happen by accident. Leadership and talent development slowed during the pandemic. Organizations leaned heavily on a small group of high performers. Cross-functional moves were limited. Depth simply didn’t build.
But here’s where many organizations still fall short: if they’re doing succession planning at all, it’s almost exclusively at the executive level.
In reality, some of the most significant operational risks sit in:
- Critical technical roles;
- Long-tenured specialists with institutional knowledge; and,
- Hard-to-replace individual contributors who keep the business running.
When those roles turn over without a plan, the impact is immediate: lost knowledge, slowed execution, and increased pressure on already stretched teams.
A strong succession approach doesn’t just map future leaders. It identifies where the business is most vulnerable and builds depth accordingly.
That’s where succession planning becomes more than a list. It becomes a targeted strategy to reduce risk and build capability where it matters most. For one of our financial services clients, for instance, we identified the critical roles, core competencies, and leadership skills required. As part of activating their succession planning, they offered team effectiveness sessions for a group of middle-management and technical subject matter experts. The program included individual assessments and coaching to determine their individual development opportunities and team sessions to improve alignment on roles and responsibilities. As a result, when an unexpected resignation arose in one of their teams, the client was able to successfully promote a new leader for the group from within the team.
Talent Risk is Now a Board-level Issue
Boards and executive stakeholders are asking more direct and frequent questions about talent risk:
- Are there retention risks or other vulnerabilities related to the CEO role?
- How strong is your pipeline for critical/leadership roles?
- Do we have the right leadership to guide us through the upcoming growth or transition?
A credible succession plan answers those questions clearly. It demonstrates that you’ve thought about risk, that you’re actively managing it, and that you’re building for continuity.
Recently, we consulted with a not-for-profit organization that found itself in a familiar but uncomfortable reality: the three-year contract for their CEO would expire in 2026, while they were entering a critical period for the organization: increased scrutiny from the global communities they served, alongside several significant operational milestones over the next 18 months. The questions from the Board: “How can we ensure we retain our CEO?” and “Are we prepared if something changes tomorrow?”
To address potential retention risks, we conducted market benchmarking and an examination of internal equity for the CEO role. We also worked with the Board to initiate a structured CEO succession review. This went beyond naming potential successors. We defined a success profile for the CEO role aligned to the company’s next stage of growth and conducted 360 reviews to assess potential internal successors’ readiness levels and development gaps.
As a result, the organization had mapped interim leadership options, clarified emergency succession protocols, and incorporated external market benchmarking to understand the viability of internal versus external succession candidates. Importantly, the Board established a regular cadence for reviewing CEO performance, compensation, and succession as part of its governance agenda, not a one-time exercise.
While the organization successfully negotiated an extension to the CEO’s contract to see them through their critical period, they now have a clear, defensible succession plan with defined pathways: immediate interim coverage, one “ready soon” internal candidate with a targeted development plan, and a longer-term external benchmarking strategy. As a result, the organization has reduced its leadership risk exposure, accelerated development for a key executive, and positioned itself to manage a CEO transition (if or when it occurs) without disrupting business performance or strategic momentum.
The Bottom Line
Succession planning has always been important. But right now, it’s becoming urgent. Not because something might happen but because things are happening. Leaders are moving. Roles are changing. Expectations are rising.
The real risk isn’t turnover. It’s being unprepared for it.
And the organizations that are prepared? They’re not just managing transitions more effectively. They’re building stronger pipelines, making better decisions, and positioning themselves to execute on what’s next.
That’s the real case for succession planning in 2026.
Ready to act? Read our next article Future-Ready Succession Plans – Your Competitive Advantage. It explores how to build a succession approach that reflects where your organization is going. For an advanced copy of this blog post, subscribe to our HR Solutions & Compensation Newsletter:
I champion stronger solutions through sharing of diverse of perspectives, experience, and expertise.
Kathleen Jinkerson, VP HR & Total Rewards Solutions