Ensure leadership continuity with proactive planning

Our succession planning solution is designed to complement your internal talent cycle and close gaps in your talent slate of future executives and leaders. This future-proofs your most critical positions, giving your business complete confidence that the next level of senior leaders have been identified. 

What is succession planning?

Succession planning is a strategic process that involves identifying and nurturing candidates to fill future leadership roles. It ensures a business can continue to thrive through periods of upheaval, avoiding leadership gaps to protect against disruption. It moves talent activities from reactive to proactive and reinforces business readiness. Often succession plans have gaps and lack external talent. Great succession planning should have ‘ready now’, ‘ready later’, and external options. It should be diverse and reflect your future business direction. If your current plan doesn’t have those elements, we can partner with you to build this.

Our approach to succession planning

With over 30 years of combined experience in executive search and identifying future talent, we've crafted a bespoke framework that consistently delivers outstanding results for businesses while flexing for your unique needs.

Trust & transparency

We take a partnership approach to succession planning , working closely alongside your business to align with your specific needs and maintaining transparency throughout the process.

A data-led approach

We make full use of data-driven assessments including competency benchmarking and can also include cognitive assessments to identify the most talented future leaders. 

Warm & human

We are committed to ensuring our succession planning process is a positive experience for all involved. Our approach is warm, human, and supportive and by prioritising the experience of both parties, we ensure a successful and enjoyable process, fostering lasting relationships with both our clients and candidates.

Benefits of succession planning

  • Minimise disruption during leadership changes
  • Build a competitive advantage by nurturing future talent
  • Consciously increase or maintain leadership diversity 
  • Complement internal succession plans with external talent
  • Meet the Board’s expectations to reduce business risk

When to use succession planning

  • To proactively close gaps in your succession slate
  • To be ready following leadership reshuffles
  • To add external options to your internal succession plan 
  • To increase diversity in your leadership levels
  • To have new skills and capabilities ready as your business evolves 

How we’ve supported businesses with succession planning

  • With rapid adoption of AI, the future skills required by our client were a prioritity, so they wanted to prepare both internal and external talent pools. First we agreed with them key competencies and drew up a list of sectors with transferable skills, in addition to competitors. We then undertook a comprehensive talent mapping exercise and approached individuals without revealing the clients name, to gauge potential interest. The client reviewed the list and then asked that we talk with a number of those identified, under NDA, revealing the client. From these conversations we then presented a succession report of the strongest individuals. Over the next 12 months we maintained regular contact on behalf of our client with the preferred candidates. During the year, three opportunities opened up within the company, and two candidates from the external list were ultimately offered roles, avoiding a lengthly process when needed.
  • A technology company recognised their leadership team had a serious lack of diversity and was not representative of their consumer base, both in their current leadership and in their ‘ready later’ talent pool. We identified external talent to add to the succession plan.
  • A consumer goods company had a strong global rotation program, however they needed to balance that with local market knowledge and local expertise. We provided support in sourcing succession candidates internationally.
  • A construction company had succession challenges for it’s Regional Director roles. They did not know when the next position would become open however they wanted to move quickly when it did. They had a concern that they always hired from competitors and wanted to think more laterally. We undertook a mapping exercise, approaching candidates confidentially at first, not revealing the client. From this the client identified preferred profiles both from competitors and more left field backgrounds. We approached those candidates to gauge their interest in future opportunities and maintained regular connection on behalf of the client. To date they have hired one individual from the external slate.