Succession Planning: Why Your Next Leader Should Never Be a Surprise

Most leadership changes don't give you much notice.

They tend to arrive as a resignation you didn't see coming, an offer from elsewhere that's hard to turn down, a house move, or simply a leader deciding it's time for something new. In that moment, the businesses that handle it best aren't the lucky ones. They're the ones who had already given it some thought.

Succession has quietly become one of the biggest topics in business, and it reaches well beyond the boardroom.

The numbers back it up. The Conference Board found that CEO successions among the largest US companies rose sharply in 2025 to their highest level in years. What's really interesting is that strong-performing companies are now almost as likely to change their chief executive as struggling ones. Leadership change is no longer a sign that something has gone wrong. It's simply part of how modern businesses operate.

That matters well below CEO level too. With leaders moving more often, your Operations Director, your Site Lead or your Head of Quality may be having career conversations you're not part of. The real question isn't whether people will move on. It's whether you'll be ready and relaxed about it when they do.

The old approach was reactive. Someone leaves, and then the scramble begins.

The better approach is continuous. It means always having a feel for your internal talent. Who's ready now, who's ready with a bit of development, and where the genuine gaps sit. It means understanding the external market well enough that you're never starting from scratch. And it means quietly getting to know the leaders you might one day want, long before there's a role to offer them.

There's a diversity angle here too, and it's one I care about. Ireland has made real progress. The CSO's most recent Gender Balance in Business figures put women at around a third of senior executives in large companies. There's further to go, and thoughtful succession planning is one of the most practical ways to keep widening that path, because it encourages you to look beyond the obvious internal name and ask who else could lead brilliantly.

This is a subject close to our heart. Across four seasons of our Greatness Has No Gender series, we've sat down with female leaders right across medtech, pharma and manufacturing, from Boston Scientific and Medtronic to Dexcom and Novo Nordisk. One theme comes up again and again. Almost every one of them credits the leaders who backed them, the managers and mentors who saw their potential before they fully saw it themselves and opened the door to the next opportunity. Those are the leaders they valued most, and it's a powerful reminder that confidence is built rather than born. The right opportunity at the right moment really can change everything, and good succession planning is simply how you create those moments on purpose.

At HERO ONE, we help organisations map their leadership, inside and out, so the next appointment is a considered, confident choice rather than a rushed one. Internal succession insight. External market mapping. Future-ready pipelines for the roles you simply can't leave to chance.

The strongest organisations I work with don't wait for a leadership gap to appear. They plan early for the ONE leader they'll need next, long before they need them.

If you haven't taken a fresh look at your leadership bench in a while, it's a great conversation to have when there's no pressure on. I'd be glad to help you think it through.

Michelle Kilcar

Co-Founder & Director, HERO