The Advisors' Blog

We’ve posted the transcript for our recent webcast, “The Secret of My Success: Best Practices for Management Succession Planning.” Our outstanding panel — Derek Chien, VP & AGC of Synopsys, Richard Fields, Head of the Board Effectiveness Practice at Russell Reynolds, Tracey Heaton, CLO and Corporate Secretary of Heidrick & Struggles, J.T. Ho, Partner at Cleary Gottlieb and Jennifer Kraft, Former EVP & GC of Foot Locker — shared succession planning best practices from their personal experience. They discussed:

Some of my favorite thoughts from the program include:

– Management succession is a top risk for any organization in terms of shareholder value creation or destruction, so it should be treated like any other area of enterprise risk management.

– It’s important to include objective assessment tools in any succession planning process. “One dinner does not a CEO successor make” & “so-and-so was a really good bourbon partner is not necessarily the reason you want someone getting a Fortune 100 CEO role.”

– Rich Fields encouraged everyone to refer to an “emergency” succession as an “unplanned” succession, to avoid implying that the leadership transition is an emergency; an unexpected succession should not be an emergency when a company has a playbook and executes on it.

– Expectations regarding the duration and scope of any transitional executive chair arrangement should be clarified upfront so there’s no stepping on toes between the executive chair and the CEO or it could make the transition more difficult instead of easier.

Members of this site can access the transcript of this program for free. It’s also available on-demand and eligible for CLE credit. Instructions for qualifying for on-demand CLE credit will be posted on the archive page. If you are not a member of CompensationStandards.com, email info@ccrcorp.com to sign up today and get access to the full transcript and webcast replay.

– Meredith Ervine