Why most succession plans fail within two seasons.
The plan is usually sound. What is missing is the machinery to run it once the person who commissioned it stops pushing.
Signed is not operating
A signed plan feels like completion and is closer to a starting line. The failure mode is not disagreement — it is inertia, with everyone continuing to behave exactly as they did before the signature.
Nothing in a document changes who people actually ask for permission.
Transfer without testing
Authority handed over in one step is never really handed over, because neither party has evidence it works. Moving decisions in tranches, each tested against a real seasonal decision, builds the confidence that makes the transfer stick.
By the fourth tranche nobody is asking whether it will hold.
No one owns the plan
Plans commissioned by the founder are, in practice, owned by the founder. When they step back, ownership of the plan goes with them and it quietly stops being maintained.
The board has to own it, which is another reason the governance work has to come first.
The review cadence
A succession plan reviewed annually survives. One reviewed when someone remembers does not. Tie the review to a fixed point in the operating calendar so it cannot quietly lapse.
When a successor leaves
Plans built around one named individual fail badly when that person changes their mind. Naming the role and its requirements, then the person, gives you something to fall back on.
Measuring whether it held
Two questions, asked a year on: are decisions being made by the people the plan says should make them, and has the board met without the founder setting the agenda.
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