Closing the Succession Gap: What Organizations Need to Do Right Now

Mary Kelly Leadership Economist | Keynote Speaker | Conference & Training Programs

The leadership succession gap is not a future problem. It is a present one. Organizations that wait for a retirement wave, an unexpected departure, or a growth opportunity to expose the weakness in their pipeline will find themselves reacting instead of leading. The good news is that the gap is closable, but only if organizations treat succession planning as a strategic priority rather than an HR formality.

Here is what that actually looks like in practice.

1. Start with an honest assessment of your pipeline

Most organizations significantly overestimate the strength of their leadership bench. Before you can close the gap, you need to know the realities. That means doing more than listing names in a succession chart. It means honestly evaluating which of those people are truly ready to step into larger roles today, which could be ready in 12-24 months with the right development, and which are placeholders on paper.

Map each critical role in your organization. Not just the C-suite, but the layers beneath it ask three questions: Who would lead this function if the current person left tomorrow? Is that person actually ready? And if not, what would it take to get them there? The answers are often uncomfortable. That discomfort is the starting point for meaningful action.

2. Rebuild the middle management development layer

One of the primary structural causes of the succession gap is the thinning of middle management over the past two decades. Cost-cutting and organizational flattening removed the very layer where future leaders learned their craft of managing teams, owning outcomes, navigating complexity, and absorbing difficult feedback. That training ground is gone in many organizations, and it needs to be rebuilt.

This does not mean adding layers of bureaucracy. It means being intentional about giving high-potential managers real responsibility and real accountability earlier in their careers. Stretch assignments, cross-functional projects, and ownership of meaningful outcomes all build leadership capability faster than any classroom program. The key is pairing the experience with coaching and reflection so that lessons actually stick.

3. Invest in formal leadership development and track it like a business metric

Only 5 percent of organizations have fully developed leadership pipelines at all levels. That number should alarm every executive team, because it means most organizations are betting their future on informal development that may or may not happen. Informal development depends on whether a high-potential person happens to have a good manager who also happens to have time and interest in developing others. That is not a strategy.

Formal leadership development does not need to be expensive or elaborate. What needs to be is consistent and tracked. Who in the organization is being developed for what? What experiences are they getting? Is it working? The organizations that close the succession gap treat leadership readiness the same way they treat revenue or customer retention, as a number they own, measure, and actively manage.

4. Make mentorship and knowledge transfer a structural priority

When experienced leaders leave without transferring their institutional knowledge, their relationships, and their judgment, organizations lose decades of pattern recognition in a single departure. The answer is not to keep those leaders longer. The answer is to build intentional knowledge transfer before they leave.

This means pairing senior leaders with high-potential successors early enough that the relationship has time to develop depth. It means creating forums where experienced leaders explicitly share how they think about decisions, not just what decisions they make. It means documenting the context and history that lives only in people’s heads. Done well, mentorship does not just transfer knowledge. It accelerates the development of leadership judgment in ways that no training program can replicate.

5. Rethink the leadership ladder for the current workforce

The traditional model, where talented people patiently climb a single ladder over many years is no longer the reality most organizations are operating in. With 91 percent of millennials not expecting to stay in any role long-term, and with lateral mobility becoming the norm, waiting for people to develop through tenure alone is a losing strategy.

Organizations that close the succession gap adjust their development model accordingly. They accelerate development through deliberate experience rather than waiting for time to pass. They create clear visibility into growth opportunities so that high-potential people understand the path forward.

And they build cultures where leadership development is seen as an investment in the individual, not just a hedge against organizational risk because that framing is what actually retains the talent worth developing.

6. Plan for transitions strategically, not reactively

Seventy-four percent of small business owners plan to eventually transition their organizations, yet most lack a structured plan for doing so. This pattern is not unique to small business. In organizations of every size, succession planning often lives on paper but not in practice. Plans are built, put in a drawer, and forgotten until a transition happens, at which point the plan is usually already outdated.

Strategic succession planning means treating leadership transitions as something you prepare for continuously, not something you react to when they arrive. It means identifying successors, closing their readiness gaps with urgency, and revisiting the plan regularly as people develop, leave, or change directions. The organizations that handle transitions smoothly are the ones that treated the next transition as inevitable and planned for it before it became urgent.

7. Engage senior leaders in their own succession

One of the most underutilized levers in succession planning is the senior leaders themselves. Many experienced executives would actively participate in developing their successors if the organization created space for it and made it feel like legacy-building rather than early retirement planning. The distinction matters. People do not resist succession when they understand that developing the next leader is one of the most important things they can do in the role they currently hold.

Create explicit expectations for senior leaders around developing talent. Make it part of how they are evaluated and recognized. When leaders see that their effectiveness is partly measured by the strength of the bench they leave behind, the culture around succession shifts from avoidance to ownership.

The Succession Gap is Real and Urgent

And it is solvable. But solving it requires organizations to move from passive awareness to active investment. The pipeline does not fill itself. Leadership readiness does not happen by default. And transitions do not go smoothly without preparation.

The next generation of leaders is capable and ready to grow. What they need from their organizations is the deliberate investment, the honest feedback, the real experience, and the clear vision of what is possible. Organizations that provide that will close the gap. Those that wait for the crisis to force the conversation will pay a much higher price.

Need help? Not sure where to start? Our award-winning book, book, Who Comes Next? Leadership Succession Planning Made Easy is a great place to start. You can also contact Mary for a complimentary free consultation at Mary@ProductiveLeaders.com