A growing number of boards are adopting the better mapped, supported, and planned path, but our research and experience highlight just how many boards are not, despite the long-held belief in the governance and investment communities that it is perhaps the most important responsibility of the board.

This report reviews the current state of succession planning globally, why more boards aren’t moving more intentionally, the shoots of change we are seeing, and some observations about the possible future of CEO succession planning.

Three mindsets about CEO succession planning

CEO succession planning continues to not be a priority that boards act on. Our work has long shown us that was the case, but we were still surprised at how few CEOs and board members said in a 2024 survey that it “is a top priority and treated as such”—only 28%.¹ Our new survey found the same:

1. Only 26% of respondents overall report that CEO succession is among their top priorities and treated as such. These leaders tend to see CEO succession as an individual and collective responsibility. They often think that both the current CEO and stakeholders demand it. And more than half say it is continuously on their agenda.
2. Another third of CEOs and board members say CEO succession planning is a top priority, but is often overlooked given other priorities. Most often, these boards expect the current CEO to manage their succession in the background, while the board deals with other matters; some add that the board lacks motivation to address it. They also often say that their stakeholders are less interested in CEO succession than other topics.
   
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3. Forty percent say CEO succession planning isn’t a priority at all. Most often, these directors just see a current CEO in place and look toward other, more pressing, concerns—either because they don’t expect their CEO to leave anytime soon or because the CEO is new to the role. A quarter say that CEO succession isn’t important for the board given their ownership structure.
   
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Starting with these three levels of priority and knowing that 67% of current CEOs were appointed internally,² we asked how boards think about the internal executive pipeline in the context of CEO succession planning. This helped us define three fundamental approaches, each reflecting a different mindset about the importance of enterprise-wide leadership readiness.

Treating leadership as material to performance

Leaders who are continuous succession strategists differ from leaders at other companies in other ways as well. Taken together, these findings underscore that, fundamentally, they see leadership as material to performance and are actively focused on making sure their organization will have the leaders it needs for today and tomorrow.

First, they see leadership as material to the company: far more often than others, they seek the same rigor of information about their leadership pipeline as they do about financial reporting and strategic risk.

Second, these companies take a very different approach to executive pipeline planning, with both the board and senior leaders paying much more attention to it and treating it as an enterprise-wide endeavor, rather than a series of efforts that are not particularly connected to each other or to business strategy.³

The good results

Finally, we see that leaders who approach CEO succession planning in a continuous, strategic way have greater confidence that both their CEO succession strategies and their executive pipeline management strategies are positioning the organization well for the future.

These leaders also report more often that their organizations have higher financial performance than peers. Correlating confidence in leadership with financial performance underscores how material these leaders think leadership is.

Considerations to improve your confidence in CEO succession planning

Fundamentally, we found that leaders who believe that CEO succession is important and act on it at the enterprise level see a range of additional concrete benefits to their business, while leaders who say it’s important but don’t act on it are no more effective than those who don’t prioritize it at all. There are clear differences between larger public companies and smaller, often private companies, which likely reflect the greater scrutiny larger companies face and the greater resources they have to spend on planning, among other factors.

But as we noted above, almost all companies are now under greater pressure to sustain performance and under greater scrutiny regarding how they do so. Indeed, many leaders expect more stakeholder scrutiny, more influence on valuation, and more regulation of their CEO succession practices.

Leadership is ever more material, yet for many boards, CEO succession planning has been—and continues to be—a low priority. That paradox is the result of other, often urgent, priorities, and a familiar mindset that CEO succession is a “project” to undertake only when a change is needed or expected.

The companies breaking away from this succession complacency are doing so for many reasons, including, as we have noted, current scrutiny, expected regulatory pressure, and regional and sector expectations. But another compelling factor is that they see the direct positive effect on results and value.

How can boards, wherever they stand today, boost their own confidence that their CEO succession practices can assure their leadership and governance conditions—and give them the best chance at business success—for the long term?

Among the CEOs and directors who aren’t confident today, the single most common suggestion for improvement is making planning more continuous.

Beyond that, however, their priorities differ:

• Directors advocate for more board involvement: A statistically significantly higher share of directors say that CEO succession planning should be a higher priority and that more of the board should be involved more often.
• CEOs push for more executive involvement: While CEOs agree there should be more input from the board, they also more often say there should be increased executive involvement in the CEO succession planning process.

But no matter the data, each board is in a unique situation. So we suggest you start by asking one simple question: Are our CEO succession planning practices positioning our organization well for the future?

Read the full report by downloading the PDF.

References

¹ See Jeremy Hanson, “CEO and board confidence monitor: Beating the succession planning paradox,” Heidrick & Struggles, October 30, 2024, heidrick.com.

² “Route to the Top 2025: Explore global CEO backgrounds and trends,” Heidrick & Struggles, April 23, 2025, heidrick.com.

³ “Treating your leadership pipeline as a strategic asset,” Heidrick & Struggles, heidrick.com.