How Many Organizations Have a Succession Plan?
The public sector answer is documented, and it has barely moved in a decade.
The nonprofit picture is comparable. Only 34% carry a written succession plan, a majority of nonprofit chief executives have not identified an internal successor, median executive director tenure runs five to seven years, and sector voluntary turnover sits near 19% against roughly 12% across all industries.
Sources: MissionSquare Research Institute with PSHRA and NASPE, State and Local Government Workforce Survey (2024, 2025); BoardSource, Leading with Intent (2024); Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy, Nonprofit Workforce report (2025).
Which Roles Belong in a Succession Plan?
Most plans cover the org chart from the top down, which produces a document nobody maintains. Faulkner HR Solutions scores roles on three factors instead. Criticality is not seniority, and the test regularly surfaces a mid-level role nobody had listed while removing a title everyone assumed belonged.
| Factor | Name | Question | Scoring |
|---|---|---|---|
| D | Disruption on Departure | How much stops, and how fast, if this person leaves in thirty days. | 1 — Work redistributes within the team 2 — A service degrades for a quarter 3 — A statutory, contractual, or safety obligation goes unmet |
| R | Replaceability | How long to hire and bring a replacement to independent performance. | 1 — Under 90 days 2 — Three to nine months 3 — Over nine months, or no known market |
| K | Knowledge Concentration | How much of what the role requires exists only in this person's head. | 1 — Documented and shared 2 — Partially documented, one backup 3 — Undocumented, no backup, relationships held personally |
The Retirement Everyone Saw Coming
The city secretary has been there twenty-six years. She knows which files sit where, which ordinance governs what, how the council actually operates, and which vendor to call when the thing that breaks every March breaks again. None of it is written down, because she has always been there.
She gives notice in October and is gone in December. What follows is a knowledge loss rather than a hiring problem, and no version of the search process recovers it. The replacement is competent and lost, because the job description covers roughly forty percent of the actual job.
Scored on the Critical Role Test, that position rates 3 on disruption, 2 on replaceability, and 3 on knowledge concentration. An 8 — and it was an 8 for the previous six years.
Why Succession Plans Get Written and Then Ignored
- It was a chart rather than a plan. Names in boxes, with no development attached, no timeline, and no honest read on whether the named successor is ready or simply next in line.
- Readiness was inferred from tenure. The longest-serving person is designated because that feels fair. Tenure measures time served and says almost nothing about capability at the next level.
- The knowledge was never transferred. The plan names who takes over and stays silent on what they need to know.
- It covered the whole organization. Scope is what determines whether a plan is maintained.
What the Engagement Produces
Every role scored on the Critical Role Test, producing a ranked short list rather than an org chart with boxes filled in.
Retirement eligibility, flight risk, and single-point-of-failure exposure for each critical role, producing a ranked register.
Honest evaluation of internal candidates against what the role requires, with each gap named specifically enough to be closed. A plan naming a successor who is not ready, without saying so, stops the organization from looking elsewhere in time.
What each successor needs, in what order, timed against the expected transition date rather than the convenient one.
Procedures, relationships, judgment rules, the annual cycle, and the reasoning behind decisions that look arbitrary from outside — captured while the person is still present and still willing.
The handoff itself, the interim structure, and onboarding for whoever arrives next.
Succession Planning by Sector
Cities, counties, and special districts. Public sector workforces skew toward retirement eligibility, and the exposed roles frequently hold statutory knowledge — city secretary, finance director, public works superintendent, licensed operators. A city manager transition is a council event as much as an HR event. With 61% of governments reporting no succession process and 46% expecting the largest retirement wave still ahead, this is the sector where the gap between stated importance and actual practice is widest.
Nonprofits. Founder transition is the hardest version. The founding executive director often holds funder relationships personally, and those do not transfer with the title. Board conflict ranks among the leading drivers of executive director departure alongside funding pressure and exhaustion, which means transitions arrive faster and less predictably than boards plan for.
Growing businesses. Key-person risk is concentrated and effectively uninsured. The operations lead who built the system, the salesperson holding the top accounts, the owner still approving everything. Succession work here is frequently the first genuinely strategic HR investment a business makes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many roles should a succession plan cover?
For most organizations under 150 employees, three to six. Score every role on the Critical Role Test — Disruption on Departure, Replaceability, and Knowledge Concentration, each one to three. Roles scoring seven or above belong in the current plan. That test usually produces a short list, and short lists get maintained.
What if we have no internal successor?
That is a finding rather than a failure, and learning it early is worth more than the plan itself. It changes the timeline, the development investment, and it tells you to build the external search relationship now rather than during the week after the notice arrives. A majority of nonprofit chief executives have not identified an internal successor, so this outcome is common.
Should we tell people they have been identified as successors?
Carefully, and it depends on the role and the firmness of the timeline. Naming a successor creates expectation and can create entitlement; not naming one risks losing the person you were counting on. Communication guidance is part of the plan for exactly this reason.
How is succession planning different from workforce planning?
Workforce planning addresses capacity and structure across the organization over a twelve to twenty-four month horizon. Succession planning addresses continuity in specific roles. They connect — the strategic workforce plan frequently identifies which roles belong in the succession work.
Our key person retires in eight months. Is it too late?
No, but the sequence changes. Eight months supports knowledge transfer and a search. It does not support developing an internal successor from scratch. Knowledge transfer becomes the priority in that window, and it is the piece organizations skip while focusing on the search.
What does knowledge transfer actually involve?
Documenting procedures, mapping relationships and who holds them, capturing the annual cycle and its deadlines, and recording the reasoning behind decisions that appear arbitrary without context. Done through structured sessions with the departing employee, with the successor or an interim holder present where possible.
Why do most succession plans fail?
Four reasons, and none of them are effort: the plan was a chart rather than a plan; readiness was inferred from tenure rather than assessed; the knowledge was never transferred; or the plan covered the whole organization and therefore got updated never. Scope discipline is what separates a plan that is maintained from one that is filed.
Related Services
The Plan Is Cheap. The Unplanned Departure Is Not.
Score your roles on the Critical Role Test first — it may be all you need. If it is not, twenty minutes identifies which roles belong in the plan and what closing the gap involves.