Succession Begins Earlier Than We Think

Over the years I have written several reflections about the point where what a business needs begins to outgrow the capability of the person who founded it.

That moment tends to sneak up on us; the company grows, the team expands, and the decisions become deeper and carry more consequences. What once relied largely on instinct and energy begins to require something more deliberate. The founder either grows with the business, often with the help of people who have travelled the road before, or the business eventually reaches a ceiling shaped by the limits of its leadership.

For a long time I assumed succession belonged to that later stage of the journey.

It felt like something you begin to think about once the company has matured, once leadership teams are established and the founder starts to consider how the organisation might continue without them.

My thinking began to change as I looked back across the organisations I have built and worked alongside, I realised that succession had often been unfolding long before anyone would have described it that way. It was present in the way people grew through their roles, in the way responsibility expanded through experience, and in the way leadership capability slowly emerged inside the organisation itself.

Not a formal plan, simply as a consequence of how the company was evolving.

Over time you begin to notice that in thriving organisations, roles behave more like developmental stages than fixed positions. People move through them in ways that feel natural. Someone steps forward into a larger responsibility and the organisation absorbs the transition with very little disruption. Another person follows behind them, already familiar with the work and already growing into the next layer of capability.

Seen often enough, it becomes clear that this is rarely coincidence and rarely the result of a fortunate recruitment decision. Something has been designed into the organisation in the way roles themselves carry the possibility of growth.

In many businesses roles behave very differently. A position appears, someone fills it, and the structure remains largely unchanged until a vacancy opens somewhere else. When that moment arrives the organisation begins searching outward for someone who might be capable of stepping into the responsibility that has appeared. External experience can bring fresh thinking and perspective, at times it brings precisely the leadership a company needs at that moment, yet organisations that endure for decades tend to reveal another pattern.

An embedded leadership culture begins developing long before it is formally required. It often begins inside the work of a role itself, as responsibility gradually expands through experience and others begin to recognise the judgement that accompanies it. People grow into responsibility gradually. They begin by learning the work of a role, and over time they begin to understand how that work connects to the wider system of the company. Decisions that once required approval begin to sit naturally with them, and others begin turning to them for guidance, often long before their title reflects that responsibility.

I remember sitting in a meeting with a leadership team where one of the directors paused halfway through the conversation and smiled slightly. “Everyone keeps turning to Emma for the answer,” he said. Emma looked slightly surprised because her title suggested she was still several steps away from the decisions now being placed in front of her. Yet the room had already decided something the organisational chart had not yet caught up with; responsibility had expanded first, and the title would eventually follow.

When the transition into the next role arrives, it rarely feels sudden. It feels more like the continuation of something that had already been unfolding for some time. Succession, in that environment, started much earlier. This becomes clearer as a business moves beyond its earliest stage of growth.

In the beginning almost every organisation relies heavily on the energy, judgement and experience of a small group of people, often the founder and the first handful of colleagues who helped build the company in the first place. Decisions travel upward, knowledge sits with individuals, and progress depends heavily on the presence of the people carrying the greatest responsibility. For a long time that model carries a business forward.

Eventually the structure begins to feel its limits. Too many decisions pass through too few people. Teams begin asking questions that could be answered much closer to the work itself. The organisation continues to grow, yet the system carrying that growth begins to feel narrower than the opportunity ahead. At that point many companies begin searching for leadership.

Sometimes they recruit externally, bringing in someone who has solved similar challenges elsewhere. Sometimes they discover that leadership has already begun emerging inside the organisation itself.

I once watched a founder come to that realisation almost accidentally.

A project had stalled and the team were discussing how to move forward. The founder listened for a while before suggesting that someone from outside the business might need to be brought in to lead the next phase. A voice spoke up from the far end of the table; one of the managers had already mapped out the next three steps the team needed to take and then, almost apologetically, began explaining how they could move forward. The atmosphere changed as everyone listened and, by the time the conversation ended, the team had already decided who was going to lead the next stage of the work. The founder looked across the table and nodded. “I think we’ve just found our answer,” he said.

In environments where roles behave more like developmental stages, capability tends to expand gradually through experience. Someone enters a role and begins by mastering the work. Over time they begin to see the wider system surrounding it. Their judgement strengthens, their confidence grows and responsibility begins to expand around them.

What happens next is that the organisation gradually learns to trust that expansion. This creates something powerful yet easy to overlook when you are inside it day to day. The company begins producing its own future capability. Leadership does not rely solely on importing experience from outside the organisation, it grows through the structure of the company itself.

This philosophy can still be interpreted in ways that create difficulty.

Some organisations formalise progression so tightly that every role appears to sit on a rigid ladder that must always lead somewhere higher. Titles multiply, structures become elaborate and promotion becomes more about movement than about expanded responsibility.

In other environments leaders recognise the importance of developing people yet struggle to create the space where responsibility can genuinely expand. Individuals become capable of far more than their role allows and eventually carry that capability elsewhere.

The organisations that seem to navigate this well approach roles from a slightly different perspective. Roles represent contribution as much as position. People deepen their mastery in one area while gradually influencing others around them. Some move across functions and discover leadership capability that might never have appeared inside a single department. Others remain specialists yet play an essential role in developing the people who will eventually take on broader responsibility.

Growth moves in several directions at once, yet beneath those different journeys sits the same underlying philosophy. Each role contributes to the development of the organisation’s future capability. Succession therefore becomes something that exists throughout the organisation itself, shaped by the way responsibility expands and experience deepens over time.

As people move through roles, responsibility expands through experience, and gradually the organisation begins to resemble something stronger than the individuals who first set it in motion.

When seen this way, succession is no longer something reserved for a distant future or a single senior appointment. It becomes a far more constant and deliberately designed part of how a healthy organisation grows. It can be found in the way roles stretch, in the way judgement develops, and in the way people begin carrying responsibility before anyone formally asks them to. And perhaps that is where the real strength of an enduring business begins to show itself; not in how tightly it depends on the people who first built it, but in how steadily it designs and develops the capability to grow beyond them.

I suspect many founders and leadership teams will recognise, when they stop and look for it, that some of the organisation’s future capability may already be forming around them, whether as opportunity or limitation.