My Canvas

  Real leadership is built through trust, not succession charts. I used to believe in Succession Planning. I sat through the presentations. I read the frameworks. I nodded along while HR walked the room through "identifying key positions" and "benchmarking core competencies," as if leadership could be reverse-engineered from a spreadsheet. It took me years in actual organizations — not classrooms, not case studies, real rooms with real politics — to realize something uncomfortable. Most succession planning is theater. Expensive, well-rehearsed theater, dressed up in the language of strategy. The Process Everyone Nods At and Nobody Trusts Here's what actually happens in most organizations. Leadership announces a succession plan. HR builds a matrix. Names get slotted into boxes labeled "high potential." A mentorship program gets launched with a kickoff meeting and a shared drive nobody opens again. And then the person leaves, or retires, or gets poached...