Most organizations have a succession plan. Very few have confidence in it. It lives somewhere in an HR system, gets reviewed once a year, and functions more as a document than an actual strategy. According to a March 2026 piece from PRADCO, that gap is no longer something organizations can afford to ignore.
Why Succession Planning Outgrew HR
The old model was simple: identify high-potentials, slot names into a replacement chart, revisit next year. In a slower business world, that worked fine. It doesn’t anymore.
Hybrid work, automation, and persistent talent shortages have turned leadership readiness into a strategic priority. The replacement chart has a built-in flaw too: it assumes roles stay static. They don’t. Job requirements are shifting faster than any chart can keep up with.
Smart organizations are ditching role-bound structures altogether. Instead of grooming someone for a specific seat, they’re developing leaders around portable capabilities — strategic thinking, resilience, influence — skills that hold up across functions and scenarios. The goal isn’t to fill a vacancy. It’s to build leaders who can handle whatever happens next.
The Number Every Executive Should Know
Only 12% of HR leaders believe their succession processes actually work. Not that they’re perfect — that they work at all.
That’s a significant problem. Most organizations are identifying talent and maybe assessing it. What they’re consistently failing to do is develop it. And that, as Jeff Spaletta sees repeatedly, is exactly where succession planning falls apart.
Strong performance doesn’t equal preparedness for the next level. Confusing the two leaves organizations underprepared for transitions and scrambling when leadership gaps appear — often at the worst possible time.
What a Real Pipeline Actually Looks Like
A succession strategy isn’t a list of names. It’s a development infrastructure. Jeff Spaletta is clear on what that requires.
Start with behavioral specificity. Vague development goals don’t build pipelines. Aligning leadership competencies toward strategic priorities, using assessments and 360-degree feedback, and defining readiness levels through objective evidence — that’s what separates a real pipeline from a spreadsheet.
Then make development ongoing. Moving employees across functions builds adaptiveness and accelerates growth, especially when paired with structured onboarding and early feedback in the first 90 to 180 days of a new role.
And the coaching has to be substantive. Rotational assignments and workshops create opportunity. Without honest feedback, defined goals, and real follow-through, you get exposure — not capability. One looks good on paper. The other actually prepares someone to lead.
Build It Before You Need It
Organizations that handle management changes well have one thing in common: they weren’t caught off guard. They’d been building quietly for years, treating development as an operational priority rather than a crisis response.
Treating succession planning as an annual exercise is one of the most common — and most avoidable — mistakes organizations make. By the time urgency sets in, the runway is already short.
Jeff Spaletta works with organizations to close that gap — building pipelines that don’t just list names, but produce leaders genuinely ready to step up. If your succession strategy is more document than capability, that’s where the work starts.
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