Planning for an exit

The non-availability of a successor is a failure of the predecessor

The field of corporate governance is occupied by regulators, accountants and lawyers. Board practitioners and operational leaders should also express views from their perspective. This monthly column is about wisdom from practice; this piece is about succession planning — and it is a boom time for corporate succession tales.

HBO debuted Succession on June 3, 2018, one inspiration being the succession tales at Murdoch’s Twenty First Century Fox and Sumer Redstone’s Viacom. As board nominations committees grapple with succession planning, experience recommends a holistic agenda of not only succession, but also predecessor exit planning.

Good succession requires the choice of