We Always Think We Have More Time: Why Succession Planning Matters to Me
Mary Kelly Leadership Economist | Keynote Speaker | Conference & Training Programs
Succession planning is often discussed as a business strategy. For me, it is also deeply personal.
I have been widowed twice.
Joe died when he was 55. Randy died when he was 58. Both were actively working. Both had responsibilities, commitments, plans, and people who depended on them. Like most of us, they believed they had more time.
So, did I.
That experience changed the way I think about leadership succession. It taught me a painful but important truth: We cannot assume that the people leading an organization today will be there tomorrow.
We do not know when an illness, accident, family crisis, unexpected opportunity, burnout, retirement, or sudden change in circumstances will take someone away from the business. Sometimes leaders leave because they are ready. Sometimes they leave because life makes the decision for them.
Either way, the organization must be prepared.
Succession planning is not about just replacing a CEO. It is about protecting the organization, preserving the founder’s legacy, preparing the next generation of leaders, and ensuring that the business can continue serving its employees, customers, vendors, and community.
A Business Should Not Die When Its Leader Leaves
Founders and long-serving CEOs frequently become inseparable from the organizations they lead. They carry the institutional knowledge, maintain the most important relationships, approve major decisions, and often serve as the primary source of confidence for employees and customers.
That may work while the leader is present. It becomes a serious vulnerability when that person leaves.
If every important decision has to go through one individual, the organization has not built leadership capacity. It has created organizational dependency.
When a founder or CEO suddenly departs, that dependency can become painfully visible. Employees are uncertain about who is in charge. Customers become nervous. Vendors question whether agreements will be honored. Lenders and investors may worry about stability. Competitors see an opportunity to recruit employees or pursue vulnerable accounts.
The organization can quickly lose momentum, revenue, talent, and trust.
A successful business should be able to survive the departure of any one person, including its founder or CEO. That does not diminish the leader’s importance. It demonstrates the leader’s effectiveness.
Great leaders do not merely build organizations that perform well while they are in charge. They build organizations that can continue performing well after they are gone.
That is leadership legacy.
A founder’s legacy should not be a company that collapses without its founder. It should be a company whose values, relationships, capabilities, and purpose are strong enough to continue.
We Wait Because We Think We Have Time
Most leaders understand succession planning intellectually. They know it matters. They agree that someone should document critical responsibilities, develop future leaders, and create an emergency transition plan.
They simply do not believe it has to happen today. That is the danger.
Succession planning rarely feels urgent when everything is going well. The CEO is healthy. The founder is engaged. The leadership team is functioning. Retirement seems several years away. There are customers to serve, employees to manage, budgets to approve, and immediate problems demanding attention.
The succession conversation gets moved to next quarter, next year, or “when things settle down.” Things seldom settle down.
There is always another deadline, customer problem, staffing issue, economic concern, or growth opportunity. Succession planning remains important but not urgent until suddenly it becomes both.
My personal experience has taught me that tomorrow is not guaranteed. Joe thought he had more time. Randy thought he had more time. They were not planning to stop working. They were still contributing, producing, helping, and looking ahead.
Their deaths reinforced something I now say to leaders with conviction: You may have more time, but your organization should never depend on that assumption.
We buy insurance even though we do not expect our homes to burn down. We back up our technology even though we do not expect our systems to fail. We create emergency plans even though we hope we will never need them.
Succession planning deserves the same attention.
It is not a prediction that something bad will happen. It is responsible preparation for the reality that leadership will eventually change.
Procrastination Is Natural, Especially If We Do Not Know Where to Start
Most leaders are not deliberately neglecting succession. They procrastinate because succession planning feels complicated, emotional, and overwhelming.
Founders may struggle to imagine anyone else leading the company they created. Family business owners may worry about offending children or creating conflict among relatives. CEOs may fear that discussing succession will make the board think they are planning to leave. Boards may hesitate to initiate the conversation because they do not want the CEO to feel threatened.
There are practical concerns as well:
- Who is capable of taking over?
- What if no internal candidate is ready?
- How do we evaluate potential successors fairly?
- What knowledge needs to be transferred?
- How long will development take?
- What happens if the CEO becomes unavailable tomorrow?
- How do we prepare for succession without creating anxiety or unhealthy competition?
When leaders do not know how to answer those questions, postponement feels easier than action.
That is human nature. We tend to delay tasks that are emotionally uncomfortable, poorly defined, or without an obvious first step.
The solution is not to wait for complete clarity. The solution is to begin.
Start With the Questions That Matter Most
Succession planning does not have to begin with a hundred-page document or the immediate selection of the next CEO. It can begin with a candid leadership conversation.
Ask:
- What would happen if our CEO or founder or ANY of our key employees could not work tomorrow?
- Who would assume decision-making authority immediately?
- Who has access to critical financial, legal, operational, and customer information?
- Which relationships depend too heavily on one person?
- What knowledge exists only in the current leader’s head?
- Who inside the organization has the potential to assume greater responsibility?
- What experience and development do those people still need?
- What positions, in addition to the CEO, are essential to business continuity?
- Are ownership succession and leadership succession being addressed separately?
- Is our plan documented, current, and understood by the right people?
The answers will quickly reveal where the organization is prepared and where it remains vulnerable.
From there, leaders can create two complementary plans.
The first is an emergency succession plan. This answers the question, “What will we do if a critical leader is unexpectedly unavailable tomorrow?”
The second is a long-term succession plan. This answers the question, “How will we identify, develop, and prepare the leaders we will need over the next several years?”
Organizations need both. A long-term leadership development program does not replace an emergency plan, and an emergency replacement list does not constitute a complete leadership pipeline.
Succession Planning Is About People, Not Positions
A name placed in a box on an organizational chart is not a succession plan.
A genuine succession process prepares people to lead. It gives promising employees opportunities to make decisions, manage budgets, lead teams, solve problems, work across departments, and build relationships with customers and stakeholders.
Future leaders need more than technical competence. They need judgment, credibility, courage, emotional intelligence, financial understanding, and the ability to lead through uncertainty.
Those capabilities take time to develop, which is another reason organizations cannot afford to wait.
Succession planning also gives talented employees a reason to stay. People are more likely to remain with an organization when they can see a future for themselves inside it. When leaders invest in their development and entrust them with meaningful responsibilities, employees understand that they are valued.
The process therefore does more than prepare replacements. It improves retention, engagement, accountability, and organizational performance today.
Succession Is an Act of Stewardship
Some leaders avoid succession planning because it forces them to confront their own mortality, eventual retirement, or changing role. I understand why that is uncomfortable.
But succession planning is about making the organization resilient.
You transfer what you have learned. You prepare others to make good decisions. You protect employees whose livelihoods depend on the organization. You give customers confidence that commitments will continue to be honored. You preserve the value that took years and sometimes generations to build.
Most importantly, you ensure that the organization’s future is not left to chance.
You do not have to complete the entire succession process today. You do, however, have to start.
Schedule the conversation. Identify the critical roles. Document the essential information. Clarify emergency authority. Assess your leadership pipeline. Give future leaders assignments that help them grow. Review the plan regularly, because people and circumstances change.
Do not wait until a departure has been announced. Do not wait until the founder becomes ill. Do not wait until the board is in crisis. Do not wait until the organization has no good options.
I know firsthand how natural it is to believe there will be more time.
Sometimes there is.
Sometimes there is not.
Succession planning matters to me because businesses should not collapse when a founder or CEO leaves. Employees should not be thrown into confusion. Families should not have to make complicated business decisions while coping with a personal crisis. A lifetime of work should not disappear because the people involved postponed a difficult conversation.
The best time to begin succession planning was several years ago.
The next-best time is now.
Dr. Mary C. Kelly is a Hall of Fame leadership speaker, PhD economist, retired Navy Commander, and author of 22 books, including Leadership is Tough: What Great Leaders Do Differently.
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