Most organizations say they do succession planning. Far fewer do it well. The typical approach involves a meeting once or twice a year where senior leaders name potential successors for key positions, someone records those names in a document or system, and then very little happens until someone leaves unexpectedly. At that point, the organization discovers that the people on the list are not actually ready, and an external search begins anyway.
This pattern repeats because organizations treat succession planning as a talent identification exercise when it should be a talent development exercise. The difference matters enormously. Identification without development is just a guessing game with a longer time horizon.
The first step in building a meaningful succession planning practice is identifying which roles are truly critical. Not every leadership position carries the same organizational risk if it becomes vacant. Critical roles are those where a vacancy would significantly disrupt operations, where the role requires deep institutional knowledge or specialized expertise, or where the external talent market for that skill set is thin. Many organizations default to mapping succession only for the top two layers of the org chart, but some of the highest-risk roles sit deeper in the organization — the plant manager who knows every piece of equipment, the technical architect who holds the system design in her head, the regulatory specialist who keeps the organization compliant. Start with a genuine risk assessment rather than an assumption that seniority equals criticality.
Once critical roles are identified, the next challenge is assessing readiness honestly. This is where many succession plans go wrong. Leaders tend to confuse high performance in a current role with readiness for a future role. These are related but distinct things. A brilliant individual contributor may lack the skills to lead a team. A strong functional manager may not be ready to operate across functions at a general management level. Readiness assessment needs to look at the specific capabilities the future role demands and evaluate candidates against those requirements, not against how well they do their current job.
A useful framework is to categorize potential successors into tiers: ready now, ready in one to two years with development, and longer-term potential. The power of succession planning lives almost entirely in that middle category — the people who could be ready with intentional investment. This is where learning and development becomes essential.
For each person identified as a potential successor, there should be a concrete development plan that addresses the specific gaps between their current capabilities and what the target role requires. These plans should include a mix of developmental experiences, not just training courses. Stretch assignments, cross-functional projects, mentoring relationships, acting or interim roles, and exposure to board or executive-level decision-making are often more powerful than classroom learning for building leadership readiness. Formal learning still plays a role — particularly for building new technical knowledge, strategic thinking frameworks, or financial acumen — but it should be part of a broader development architecture rather than the whole plan.
L&D leaders have a critical role to play here that many do not fully claim. If your organization runs a succession planning process and your L&D function is not deeply connected to it, you are missing your highest-leverage opportunity. You should be at the table when readiness gaps are discussed, helping to design development pathways, curating learning experiences, facilitating peer learning among successor candidates, and tracking development progress over time. Succession planning without a learning strategy behind it is just wishful thinking.
Several common pitfalls undermine even well-intentioned succession efforts. One is the confidentiality trap. Some organizations keep their succession plans entirely secret, believing that naming potential successors will create entitlement or disappointment. While full transparency about every detail may not be appropriate, people generally need to know they are being developed for expanded responsibility in order to engage meaningfully in their own growth. You can have a conversation about development direction without making a promise about a specific job.
Another pitfall is lack of diversity in the pipeline. If the succession list for every critical role features the same demographic profile, the process is reinforcing existing patterns rather than building organizational resilience. Broadening the lens — looking at emerging talent earlier, considering non-obvious candidates, and actively developing people from underrepresented groups — produces a stronger bench and reduces the risk of groupthink at senior levels.
A third common mistake is treating the plan as static. People leave, develop faster than expected, plateau, or change their career aspirations. The plan needs to be reviewed and updated regularly, and the development activities associated with it need active management, not just annual check-ins.
The organizations that do succession planning well treat it as an ongoing discipline rather than an annual event. They connect it directly to their learning strategy, they hold leaders accountable for developing their people, and they measure progress in terms of actual capability growth, not just names on a chart. For L&D professionals, there is no more strategic place to invest your energy than in making this connection real.