The best analyst on a team I advised was promoted to lead it, and within six months she was drowning. Not because she had gotten worse at the work. She had gotten better. She was still the fastest, most accurate, most reliable person in the room. That was the problem. She kept doing the work […]
A senior director sits across from her boss in a development conversation. She has been told, again, that she needs to “work on her executive presence” if she wants to be considered for the next role. She nods, takes notes, and walks out with no clearer sense of what to do tomorrow than she had […]
Succession-Proofing Change Narratives Executive turnover is no longer an episodic disruption. Boards rotate sponsors mid-flight, new leaders arrive with new mandates, and large transformations often outlast the executives who launched them. The real vulnerability isn’t just decision latency—it’s narrative whiplash. When the story behind the change collapses, so does trust. Succession-proofing the narrative means treating […]
For decades, organizations have used the same blunt instrument to reward good work: a promotion. The best salesperson becomes a sales manager. The strongest engineer takes over the engineering team. The most reliable analyst gets handed direct reports. We tell ourselves we are advancing top performers. What we are actually doing, in most cases, is […]
Leadership development and succession planning are often seen and treated as separate activities. Yet they really should go hand in hand, or even be thought of as two-sides of the same coin. You can’t have an effective succession plan if you’re not continually identifying and developing high performing, high potential people in your organization, and […]
Why is the process of finding a leader–whether to backfill someone or to fill a new role–often treated as an isolated event rather than an ongoing process? With the cost per hire only rising, why do so few organizations have a process for identifying and cultivating leaders within their existing talent pool? Neil Nicoll, President […]
Jesse Jacoby
Jeff Shuck
klagunas
