Find where your business depends on one person. Build the people who will carry it. Prove it holds before you need it to.
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Think about the key person your business depends on most. It might be you. If they were gone Monday, who makes the decisions, who keeps customers confident, who keeps the work moving? You already know where it would hurt.
16%
of smaller organizations have a formal succession plan.
Source: SHRM, 2025.
If your answer is 'we'd figure it out,' you just found the reason to start.
What figuring it out costs.
Ninety days of rushed decisions. Customers who use the gap to test the competition. A promotion you make because you ran out of time, not because they were ready. And a price, when you sell, that reflects all of it.
You can hand over the title, the equity and the org chart in an afternoon. The judgment, the relationships and the decisions behind them take preparation. And proof.
The quiet version of this problem is the one you don't say out loud: if something happened to you, this place would run on luck.
GuideSuccession is the process. Your leaders do the work inside it, on your real roles, with us guiding. Each step ends with evidence before the next one begins.
Your part: the interviews in week one, a decision at every gate, and six commitments of your own.
Where does the business depend too much on one person?
We map every critical responsibility: leadership, sales, operations, customer relationships, technical know-how. Each is scored by what stops if that person is out and how hard coverage would be. The owner is on the map too.
You get: the Exposure Map: priority roles, exposure, immediate coverage, who owns each gap.
What it ends: "We'd figure it out."
What must the next person be able to deliver?
Before anyone says a name, we define each priority role around where the business is going: results, decisions they must own, behaviors, relationships, guardrails, and the evidence that would prove readiness.
You get: a Role Success Profile for each priority role, signed before any candidate is discussed.
What it ends: promoting the person you like best.
Who could step in, and what is missing?
Develop one person, prepare several, recruit from outside, split the role, or bridge with interim coverage. Internal candidates are judged on interest, results, judgment, structured interviews, assessments, and the hole their promotion would leave.
You get: a succession path per role, with alternatives and the trigger for an outside search.
What it ends: the heir apparent nobody has tested.
What has to change hands so the next person can succeed?
A 90-day Transfer Plan per priority: real assignments that build and show capability, authority moved in stages, knowledge and relationship handoffs, coaching, and coverage for the candidate's current job. The incumbent signs commitments too.
You get: the Transfer Plan with owners, dates and evidence, plus who is told what, by whom, and when.
What it ends: a successor with a title and no authority.
Can performance continue when responsibility moves?
The Will It Hold test: a planned absence, a delegated decision period, a customer or supplier handoff, an acting assignment, or a scenario drill where a live test is unsafe. We review results, guardrails, independent decisions, escalations, and what came back to the original person.
You get: tested coverage, a readiness rating for every role, and the Transition Checklist for the day it happens, planned or not.
What it ends: finding out on the worst possible day.
Most succession plans fail on the owner's side of the desk. The successor goes to a leadership program. The owner keeps making every decision. Twelve months later, nothing has moved except the calendar.
You will say you are ready to let go. Your calendar will say otherwise.
So the incumbent signs six commitments and is inspected on them every week, same as the successor.
Build Something That Does Not Depend On You™.
Book a ConversationNo calls. No quick questions. Whatever comes back to you is the exposure. That is the simplest version of the Will It Hold test, and we run harder ones: delegated decision periods, relationship handoffs, acting assignments, scenario drills for the situations you cannot test live.
If your phone rings in week one, that is not loyalty. That is exposure.
Every priority role ends with one of four readiness ratings, updated monthly.
You keep the appointment decision. We make sure it is an informed one.
The Monday it happens without a plan: a binder nobody opens, a name on a chart, a 6 a.m. phone call nobody is ready for, and a quarter spent finding out who can actually do the job.
The Monday it happens with GuideSuccession: four tools your leaders already use, a successor who has carried the authority for months, and a rhythm that has been testing the answer every week.
01
where you are exposed, who covers what today, and who owns each gap
02
what each critical role must deliver, decide and carry
03
90 days of real work, staged authority, owners, dates and proof
04
authority, access, relationships and communications for the day it happens, planned or not
Every Monday, each transfer commitment is checked, kept or missed, with evidence. Within 24 hours of a miss, a recovery step with an owner and a date. Monthly, readiness ratings reviewed. Quarterly, the Exposure Map refreshed.
Your internal sponsor owns it. We guide the install and stay on where agreed.
| Program | What it is | Length | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| GuideSuccession Exposure Map | Steps 1 to 3. Interviews, exposure scoring for up to eight roles, success profiles for the top five, candidate review with assessments, a path per role, a board-ready readout. | 30 to 45 days | $10,000 |
| GuideSuccession Installation | Steps 4 and 5 for one role: the 90-day Transfer Plan, staged authority, coaching for both sides, the Will It Hold test, the Transition Checklist, the weekly check-in. Includes a six-session program for the successor. | 90-day cycle per role | From $15,000 per priority role |
| Ongoing governance | Commitments checked weekly, readiness ratings monthly, the Exposure Map quarterly. | Monthly | $5,000 to $10,000 a month |
| Ownership transition workstream | Family transfer, employee purchase, partner buyout or sale. We lead leadership continuity; your advisers lead the transaction. | As needed | Scoped on a call |
You are still the one holding it.
The next generation inherits the culture, not just the stock.
The bench is thinner than the org chart suggests.
Leadership continuity through the hold, and a bench the buyer will pay for. Fortune 500 welcome.
If you answer to a board or a regulator: banks and credit unions owe their examiners a management succession plan, and nonprofits, portfolio companies and family boards owe one to their directors. We run it with the board in the room. Community banks run it through Community Bankers Institute.
An aerospace manufacturer ran entirely through its CEO. We built the leadership system underneath him, changed how he led, and documented a succession plan for the first time.
Read the aerospace caseAn HVAC sales and service company brought in a general manager as the owner's successor, built the leadership system under him over seven months, grew revenue 21% and took net income to 37% of revenue, then sold in 2026.
“I built this company by driving everything. I thought that was leadership. What I learned is that it was the ceiling.”
The Exposure Map takes 30 to 45 days. Each Installation runs a 90-day cycle per priority role. Readiness is earned over time. A finished first engagement does not mean every successor is ready, and we will tell you which ones are.
No. We define the role before anyone looks at names, bring evidence on every candidate, and give you a readiness rating per role. Your company keeps the appointment decision.
Then we say so. "No credible option yet" is one of the four readiness ratings, and it triggers a defined path: an outside search through our search firm, interim coverage, or a redesign of the role. Hope is not a path.
A nine-box records opinions. GuideSuccession produces evidence: a role defined before names, staged transfers of real authority, a Will It Hold test, and a weekly check on whether the incumbent is actually letting go. The list tells you who. This tells you whether.
No, and it should not. Your attorney, CPA and valuation or wealth adviser own structure, tax, valuation, financing and the transaction. We own leadership continuity and organizational readiness, and the plan names who holds each piece so nothing falls between.
Your internal sponsor owns the process. Transfer commitments are checked weekly, readiness ratings are reviewed monthly, the Exposure Map quarterly. Our ongoing governance program keeps us in the room if you want us there.
No. It started with family and founder-led companies because that is where the exposure is most personal. It runs the same way in privately held companies with professional leadership and in private-equity portfolio companies.
You don't need every answer to begin. You need a clear view of where you are exposed and a decision to do something about it. You don't have to be leaving to need a succession plan. You just need a business that depends too much on someone staying.
Thirty minutes with Steve. Bring the roles you worry about. We start with what happens if they leave, what coverage exists today, and where preparation should start.
