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Succession planning fails quietly. The plan exists, the names are on the chart, and then a key leader resigns and nobody is ready. We help CEOs, CHROs and boards identify the roles that matter most, assess successors on evidence rather than tenure, and build a bench that is ready when the business needs it.
50% of internal candidates promoted, twice the client’s target · 21 roles mapped, 15 of them critical · India and UAE
Tenure, visibility and proximity to leadership decide who is named. Readiness for the actual role is rarely tested.
Names sit on a chart with no development behind them. When the role opens, the successor is still a year away.
Without agreeing which roles carry the business, effort spreads thinly across every position, and the riskiest gaps stay hidden.
Retirements, resignations and reorganisations move faster than informal development can keep up with.
We work on the whole succession system, not just the list of names.
We agree with leadership which roles carry the most business risk, map the organisation around them, and flag where retirements or exits are likely over the next decade.
We design a talent review that leadership can run itself, and build a succession slate for each critical role showing who could step in and when.
Successors are assessed against the future role, using psychometrics, 360-degree feedback and business capability assessment, and reported as ready now or ready in one to three years. Read more about our leadership assessment.
Each successor gets a development plan built on the assessment, with one-to-one executive coaching, mentoring and sponsor reviews. For cohorts of future leaders, see our leadership programmes.
For CXO and senior leadership roles, we help boards and CEOs plan succession well ahead of the vacancy, combining internal readiness with an outside view where needed.
Map the organisation, agree the roles that matter most, and assess retirement and exit risk for each.
Set out the skills and behaviours for success in each critical role. Where these do not yet exist, we build them with you through competency mapping.
Test each potential successor against the future role, on evidence, and agree readiness with sponsors rather than delivering it as a verdict.
Build development plans from the assessment, and support them through coaching, mentoring and structured sponsor reviews.
Hand over a process guide and facilitation materials so leadership can run the talent review every year and keep the succession slate current.
New roles need leaders who are ready before the structure changes.
A planned or sudden exit exposes how thin the bench is.
Long-serving leaders hold knowledge that has never been written down.
The business is scaling faster than its leaders are.
A merger, acquisition or new leadership team needs a fresh view of who is ready for what.
For succession within promoter families in the Gulf, see our family business advisory in the UAE.
With a reorganisation a year away, the business set out to choose its next leadership layer from 15 leaders two levels below the CEO, and set its own success threshold at three. We assessed every leader on evidence, coached each one for twelve months and kept sponsors close through structured reviews.
Result: 6 of 12 internal candidates promoted into roles reporting to the CEO, twice the target, and 9 of 15 leaders succeeded overall.
A precision manufacturer with no formal role descriptions and a retirement wave ahead needed to see which roles carried the business and who could step into them. We mapped the organisation, wrote the roles, built a retirement risk register and designed a talent review the leadership now runs itself.
Result: 21 roles mapped across two units, 15 of them critical, each with a succession slate.
Critical roles, risk register, talent review process and succession slate, usually as part of a six to twelve month talent engagement.
Assessment and twelve months of coaching for a named cohort of potential successors, with sponsor reviews throughout.
Focused support for a specific CXO succession, from readiness assessment to the leader’s first months in the role.
Every engagement is confidential and shaped around your organisation, your critical roles and how involved your CHRO and leadership team want to be.
Tell us which roles worry you most. Our succession planning consultants will help you see where the bench is thin and what it would take to make it ready, for organisations across India and the UAE.
Succession planning is how an organisation makes sure it has ready leaders for its most important roles. It identifies the critical roles, assesses who could fill them and when, and develops those people before the role opens.
We help you agree the critical roles, assess potential successors on evidence rather than opinion, design a talent review your leadership can run, and support the development that makes successors ready. We work alongside your CHRO and HR team, not instead of them.
A talent review is a structured discussion where leaders review the readiness and potential of people for critical roles, using agreed criteria and evidence. Done well, it turns succession from a list of names into a decision the leadership team owns.
We assess each successor against the demands of the future role, using psychometric assessment, 360-degree feedback and business capability assessment. Readiness is reported as ready now or ready in one to three years, and agreed with sponsors.
Designing the succession system for an organisation usually takes three to six months within a wider talent engagement. Developing a cohort of successors typically runs for around twelve months.
Yes. For CXO and senior leadership roles, we help the board and CEO plan succession well before the vacancy, assess internal candidates on evidence, and support the chosen leader through the transition.
Yes. For promoter families in the Gulf, see our family business advisory in the UAE.
Yes. We work with organisations across India from Bengaluru and across the Gulf from Dubai, in person and virtually.
Planet Ganges is a prominent player in Business Transformation, delivering tailored interventions in Organisational Culture, Climate, and Leadership Capability.