Heidrick & Struggles: Taking the Emergency out of Emergency Succession Planning

Heidrick & Struggles’ recent article discusses how boards can make a habit of emergency succession planning to ensure that they have a robust plan in place. According to the 2014–2015 National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Public Company Governance Survey, almost 30% of directors report that their boards lack a formal emergency CEO succession plan.

Heidrick & Struggles recently asked each director of a regional bank if the board had an emergency succession plan in place. All 11 directors assured us that it did. But when we asked for the successor’s name, three different names emerged. In another instance, a global bank’s emergency succession planning document unambiguously identified the company’s president as successor. Yet when the directors were polled privately, almost all admitted that they had no confidence in the choice they had ostensibly approved.

This article outlines the top five ways that boards can fulfill their responsibility to produce an emergency succession plan.