Most organizations say they do succession planning. Far fewer do it in a way that would survive a real stress test — a sudden departure, an unexpected retirement, or an organizational restructuring that eliminates a layer of leadership. The gap between having a succession plan on paper and having people genuinely ready to step into critical roles is where learning and development has its most strategic opportunity.
The first step, and the one most frequently rushed, is identifying which roles are truly critical. Critical does not simply mean senior. A critical role is one where a vacancy would cause disproportionate disruption to strategy execution, revenue, safety, compliance, or institutional knowledge. Some of these roles are obvious — the CEO, the head of a major business unit — but many are not. A plant manager at the only facility running a proprietary process, a regulatory affairs specialist who holds key agency relationships, a program director who is the sole point of continuity across a multi-year initiative: these are the roles that organizations often fail to plan for because they don't sit at the top of the org chart. A useful exercise is to ask leadership teams a simple question: if this person left tomorrow with no notice, what would break? The answers tend to be revealing and rarely match the formal succession planning list.
Once critical roles are identified, the next task is assessing readiness — and this is where many plans go wrong. A common pitfall is confusing high performance with high potential. Someone who is excellent in their current role may not have the capabilities, interest, or developmental trajectory to succeed in a fundamentally different one. Readiness assessment should look at demonstrated competencies, learning agility, leadership behaviors, and — crucially — developmental gaps that can realistically be closed in a given timeframe. Categorizing successors as ready now, ready in one to two years, or ready in three or more years is a simple but effective framework that forces honest conversation. Without it, succession plans tend to become wish lists filled with names that make people feel good but do not reflect reality.
This is exactly where learning and development becomes essential. A succession plan without a corresponding development plan is just a list. Once you know who your potential successors are and what gaps they need to close, L&D can build targeted development pathways: stretch assignments, cross-functional rotations, mentoring relationships, executive coaching, and structured learning experiences that build the specific capabilities each successor needs. This is not about sending people to generic leadership programs. It is about deliberately constructing experiences that prepare a specific person for a specific kind of role.
Several common pitfalls undermine even well-intentioned succession planning efforts. The first is treating it as a once-a-year event. Business conditions change, people leave, new talent emerges, and strategic priorities shift. Succession plans need to be reviewed and updated at least quarterly, and development progress should be tracked with the same rigor as any other business initiative.
The second pitfall is lack of transparency. When succession planning is done entirely behind closed doors, potential successors have no idea they are being considered and no motivation to pursue the development activities that would prepare them. This does not mean you need to promise anyone a specific future role, but people who are being developed for greater responsibility should know it, and they should have a voice in their own development planning.
A third pitfall is homogeneity. Succession slates that look like a mirror image of current leadership represent a serious risk — not only from a diversity and inclusion standpoint, but because organizations facing new challenges often need leaders with different perspectives, backgrounds, and skill sets. Actively broadening the pool of potential successors and examining the criteria used to assess readiness for bias are essential practices.
Finally, succession planning fails when it is disconnected from the broader talent strategy. It should be linked to workforce planning, talent reviews, engagement and retention efforts, and organizational learning priorities. When L&D leaders have a seat at the succession planning table, they can ensure that development investments are targeted where they will have the most strategic impact, rather than spread thinly across populations where the return is uncertain.
The most effective succession planning looks less like a static chart of names and boxes and more like an ongoing, dynamic system: continuously identifying where the organization is most vulnerable, building a deep and diverse bench, and using development as the primary mechanism to close readiness gaps. For L&D professionals, this is one of the clearest paths to strategic relevance — connecting individual growth to organizational resilience in a way that leadership can see and measure.