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Most organisations know where their leadership risk sits. Few are creating options fast enough.
In conversations with Chief Human Resources Officers and Chief People Officers at large companies across technology, aerospace, science, private equity and industrial sectors, two findings stood out. 70% scored their executive team at the "little to no capacity" end of the scale for capacity, time and headspace. And 80% said they have a single point of failure sitting with a specific individual.
That pressure shows up in who stays. Executives who would once have stayed in role for seven years are now moving on after two. Successors are stepping into senior roles after around two and a half years, where we would once have expected closer to five. And the roles they step into are broader, asking leaders to judge when to trust AI, navigate geopolitical risk and make decisions under sustained uncertainty, all at once.
Yet when executive teams are stretched, developing successors is often the first thing to slip.
Too often, succession planning looks through a single lens: the names on an internal plan. Getting ahead of the risk means looking through three.
Depth: who is genuinely ready, and how do you know?
A business can have names on every line of its succession plan and still lack real depth. A nomination or a strong delivery record no longer tells you enough. Alongside every nomination, look for at least one more source of evidence, such as an independent assessment, a stretch assignment or a second leader's view. And test for will as well as skill: we are seeing fewer people in succession pools who want the top job.
Breadth: do enough of your leaders have the capabilities you need?
Some leadership gaps can't be filled from within. Yet 80 to 90% of C-suite searches still begin only once a role is already open or about to be. With a search typically taking three to six months before any notice period, the real gap is often far longer. Knowing who is out there for your most important roles while the incumbent is still in post gives you options before you need them.
Leadership stewardship: how do you help executives develop the people they lead?
A leader can deliver strong results and still leave the organisation exposed. Senior leaders also leave behind a leadership system: the people they developed, the decisions they handed over and the dependencies they removed. The strongest teams share knowledge, build recovery into how they work and treat succession as a standing business risk, not an annual HR exercise.
The full paper includes practical actions for each lens and three questions to take to your executive team.
Where is your executive team's biggest succession risk?
In a 30-minute conversation, Cordelia Fyler, Partner at Deepsky Leaders, will work through these questions with you and help you pinpoint where to focus first. Contact Cordelia at cordelia.fyler@deepskyleaders.com