Beyond the Obvious: How to get Chair Succession Right
Chair succession is a pivotal moment for boards. It presents an opportunity to reflect on the organisation’s future needs and steer it forward strategically. For this reason, organisations must proceed carefully in their Chair searches, eschewing the obvious in favour of what’s truly needed.
In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner, is joined by Louise Angel. Louise is Senior Managing Director at Teneo and a leading board headhunter, specialising in Chair and Non-Executive Director appointments for UK companies. She works closely with boards on succession planning, board composition and effectiveness, and complex and high-profile chair appointments.
“Chair succession is one of those moments where you can genuinely change the trajectory of how a board operates.”
To Louise, while companies often refer to Chairs as “running” the board, the reality is much more subtle. Chairs set the tone for the quality of the debates, challenges, and discussions. High-quality conversations lead to higher perceptions of board effectiveness, CEOs feeling better supported, and stakeholders being happier and more engaged. For this reason, when succession comes up, it is a key moment to reflect on what the company needs for its next phase of evolution, and what an effective Chair would need to look like to support and lead that evolution.
“The Chair shouldn’t be choosing their own successor.”
Ideally, Chair searches begin 18 to 24 months in advance. Louise notes that the conversation around succession planning is less awkward if it is a consistent agenda item. The Senior Independent Director (SID) is best suited to drive the conversation, and the board should also consider the timing of Chair succession with CEO transitions to avoid too much change at once.
“Identifying the internal fragility is the best way to focus attention on where global risk might actually break the company. If you don’t approach it this way, you spend all your time chasing the news cycle, which is broad and full of scary things, but only a few of which are probably truly scary to your firm.”
A firm’s unique risk profile is the best insurance against noise and unnecessary expense. Large firms can overspend on mitigation or miss a big risk and still survive. Mid-size and smaller firms don’t have that grace. Focusing on real, specific risks is a more affordable and sustainable model for closing the gap than worrying about everything.
“I would always encourage boards to challenge themselves on some of their assumptions. Do you really need someone who has chaired before or who has direct sector experience? Or are you potentially ruling out some very strong candidates by default?”
Louise notes that Chair succession is an inherently conservative process. This leads selection committees to choose people with traditional profiles and lean on prior experience as an easy proxy for suitability. However, by questioning assumptions and expanding the search pool, firms can go beyond the handful of people everyone is chasing to uncover other strong candidates who may be better suited for the firm’s unique needs.
“If you spend the time upfront getting as much clarity as possible on the necessary candidate skillset and profile, you increase your chances of a quick and clean process, which you will only have to run once.”
The top three takeaways from our conversation for effective boards are:
- See Chair succession as a real opportunity for strategic development and not just a tick-box process
- Spend time getting the brief right.
- Run a process that is both rigorous and thoughtful. The mechanics matter, but so do the human dynamics — and it’s the combination of the two that leads to the best outcomes.
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