Any large old org with a significant fraction of senior management above 60 should be running succession planning drills rn. Run simulations with a randomly selected 10% presumed critically incapacitated or dead. This is basically Iran government atm.
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My suggestion: for every VP+ position regardless of age and health, appoint a) a peer buddy at same level tasked with maintaining situation awareness b) understudy from among direct reports. Both should start attending meetings of the principal. If they go down, a+b backstop.
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This isn’t regular succession planning with a chain/cascade of “promotions” following isolated deaths/retirements. Nor is this a disguised “opportunity” for a reorg since you may not get the casting control you need to make lemonade out of this lemon.
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Your *best* execs may get taken out and you may have to backstop with B-team. Unfortunately I’ve seen exactly this situation in some of my client orgs: best people are also visibly unhealthy through workaholism.
So you need to make the whole senior management model more robust.
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People don’t realize how even large Fortune 100 type companies are held together by a handful of non-interchangeable linchpin A-players. Like a few dozen among 100k employees. Any one of them being taken out can force a serious reorg/new strategy. 10% decimation is a crisis.
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Rank and file tend to assume senior leaders are useless overpaid deadweight and that it’s easier to do their jobs when they’re not in the way. Often true, but unfortunately when it’s not true it’s disastrously not true. Taking out an effective leader creates a headless chicken.
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