War-game a succession plan before a key departure proves the interim owner, the knowledge map, and the customer handoff were never real.
Succession plans fail when backups are named without capacity, when knowledge lives in one head, when board and staff get different stories, and when customers learn from silence. A clean org chart with a dotted line is not evidence that the company can absorb a sudden empty seat without chaos.
Name the seat and the trigger
Write which role the plan covers, what events activate it, who becomes interim owner, and the first thirty-day outcomes that still must hold. Examples: CEO medical leave, CTO exit, or head of sales resignation. Then write the post-trigger owner for each critical decision. If you cannot name the owner, the plan is decoration.
Freeze the interim authority matrix, the knowledge and access handoff, the board and staff message, and the customer contact map. Attach the before-and-after decision rights, the retention risks, and the recruiting path if the seat must be filled externally. Split any secondary goals into separate decisions. One succession plan under fire at a time.
Hostile seats
- People seat: backups without capacity, career path conflicts, and quiet flight risk.
- Board or investor seat: authority gaps and story mismatch with the next update.
- Ops seat: access, vendors, and decisions that stall when the primary is gone.
- Customer seat: who they call next week and what response time gets worse.
- Skeptic seat: the claim that looks cleanest and has the least evidence.
Ask each seat for material objections, missing owners, and the smallest change that keeps the intent without the theater. Optional counsel seat if employment terms, equity, or works councils are in play.
Private pass
Run that package in Pingpong. Sequential review helps because an early pass can defend the interim chart while later passes try to kill soft ownership and knowledge claims. Keep a change log of decision rights clarified, backups renamed, and transition risks accepted. If survival requires silence about a single point of failure, stop. Rewrite the plan or delay the "ready" label.
Publish the activation calendar inside the package: who is told first, when titles and access flip, and when customers hear a named owner. A succession plan without a dated handoff is a rumor with an org chart. Ask the ops and customer seats to break that calendar before anyone files the plan as complete.
Related: war-game a delegation framework, war-game a reorg, war-game a promotion decision, pretend you are the board chair, and AI for high-stakes decisions. Mechanics: how it works.