Succession planning starts with diagnosis, not a list of names

Sometimes you are lucky enough to be rushed into hospital with something obvious:

The baby is coming.
Your heart has stopped.
The bone is clearly broken.

In those moments, no one wastes time debating what might be wrong. Action follows certainty.

But most of the time, medicine does not work like that.

Most of the time it starts with, “We need to do a lot more tests before we do anything.?”
Before we operate.
Before we prescribe drugs.
Before we put you in a plaster cast.
Before we send you home.

Because the diagnosis matters more than the intervention.  Get the diagnosis wrong and even the best treatment makes things worse.

I have spent years watching organisations ignore that lesson entirely when it comes to succession planning.

The ritual of succession planning

I have sat in countless succession planning sessions. They tend to follow a familiar pattern.

A list of senior leaders goes on the wall.
Under each name, people suggest one or two possible successors.
Boxes are ticked. Risks are colour coded.
Everyone leaves feeling reassured.

Except very little of substance has actually been discussed.

No serious examination of what skills the current role truly requires.
No honest assessment of what skills the proposed successors actually have.
No conversation about what skills the business will need in three to five years’ time.

It is not succession planning. It is role based guesswork.  And in a world that is changing as fast as this one, guesswork is dangerous.

Roles do not fail, skills do

When succession planning goes wrong, it is rarely because the individual lacked potential.  It is because the organisation never articulated what leadership meant in practical, observable, skill based terms.  Instead, leaders fall back on proxies.

Experience.
Tenure.
Personal style.
Psychometric colour codes.

None of these tell you whether someone can run a business through volatility, complexity, and constraint.  Leadership Defined starts from a different premise.

Leadership is not personality.
Leadership is not seniority.
Leadership is a set of business critical skills applied under pressure.

If you cannot describe those skills clearly, you cannot assess them.
If you cannot assess them, you cannot develop them.
And if you cannot develop them, succession planning is theatre.

Diagnose the business first

In medicine, diagnosis starts with understanding the system.

What is happening now.
What is likely to deteriorate.
What future stressors are coming.

Succession planning should be no different.  Before you talk about people, you need to answer three uncomfortable questions.

What are the real leadership skills our business relies on today?
Which of those skills are in short supply already?
Which new skills will be non negotiable as the business evolves?

For many leadership teams, this is where the conversation becomes difficult.  Because the answers often reveal gaps at the top, not just in the pipeline.

From colour codes to skill codes

I have nothing against personality tools. They can be useful.
But they are not a substitute for capability.  The future does not care whether your successor is red, blue, or green.
It cares whether they can:

Make high quality decisions with incomplete data.
Lead through uncertainty without false certainty.
Integrate technology, including AI, into core business thinking.
Challenge poor strategy without destabilising the organisation.
Build trust across generations, functions, and cultures.
Hold people accountable without crushing engagement.

These are skills. They can be defined. They can be observed. They can be developed.  Succession planning should be skills coded, not colour coded.

The cost of getting it wrong

Poor succession planning rarely shows up immediately.

It shows up later as strategic drift.
As over reliance on external hires.
As internal talent disengaging because they can see the game is rigged.
As boards losing confidence just when the organisation needs stability.

By the time it becomes visible, it is usually too late to fix quietly.  The irony is that the fix is not complicated. It just requires discipline.

A better starting point

If you want succession planning that actually works, start here.

Define leadership in your business in skill based terms.
Assess your current leaders against those skills honestly.
Assess your future leaders against the same criteria.
Identify gaps without judgement or defensiveness.
Develop against the future, not the past.

That is diagnosis.

Only then should you decide who is ready, who could be ready, and who will never be right for the role.

Succession planning is not about comfort.  It is about continuity.  And continuity only comes from knowing what you are really treating.