Conversation

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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