Most organizations do not discover their succession planning gaps during periods of stability. Rather they are revealed when a key technology leader leaves with little notice and no one is prepared to step in.
Despite years of discussion around talent shortages and leadership continuity, fewer than 60% of organizations have a meaningful succession plan for their technology organization. Even fewer have addressed how knowledge is transferred across leadership roles.
When disruption occurs, the issue is rarely a lack of capable people. It is a lack of depth.
Too often, succession planning is treated as an exercise in replacement rather than preparation. In many organizations, the conversation narrows quickly to a single question:
Who replaces the CIO?
That question matters, but it does not address the full risk. Leadership continuity depends as much on the strength of the team beneath the top role as it does on the role itself.
Why Continuity Can’t Stop at the Top
Succession planning often stalls before it starts because organizations never define what success actually looks like. For some CIOs, success means knowing who could step into their role tomorrow. For others, it means building a leadership pipeline that spans directors, managers, and functional leaders across the technology organization.
And succession planning fails when organizations choose one and neglect the other.
Additionally, plans tend to break down when succession planning is treated as synonymous with promotion. Not everyone will, or should, move up, and a plan built on that assumption quickly becomes unrealistic. The more useful question is practical rather than aspirational: What does your organization need to remain stable, responsive, and effective when change occurs?
Too often, these conversations stop at the top.
CIOs are asked about their successor, but rarely about the layers beneath them. That narrow focus misses the reality of how IT organizations actually operate. Leadership continuity depends just as much on who can lead infrastructure, applications, security, or data as it does on who occupies the top spot.
Building Depth Where Risk Actually Resides
Not all technology roles carry the same level of operational or strategic risk. The roles that demand depth will vary by industry and operating model. Succession planning goes beyond treating every role equally and focuses on understanding where the organization is most vulnerable and planning accordingly.
In product-driven organizations, application development and product leadership are often central to continuity. In more traditional or service-oriented environments, infrastructure, reliability, or security roles tend to represent the greatest threat to stability when disrupted.
This is especially true for senior technology roles that are filled infrequently. When plans are built around what feels familiar rather than what the business actually needs, organizations optimize for comfort instead of resilience.
A useful way to think about this is through the concept of a depth chart.
In sports, depth charts exist because injuries and changes are inevitable. When one player goes down, others move up or across, and the entire lineup adjusts. IT organizations function the same way.
If you only have one person who can play a position, you don’t have a plan.
A depth chart shifts the focus from naming a single successor to building real bench strength. It forces practical questions: Who could fill this role in the short term? Who is one move away? Who needs exposure to be ready?
Without that depth, even a thoughtful succession plan can fail when it’s finally tested.
Depth Depends on Shared Knowledge
Bench strength alone is insufficient if leaders cannot realistically step into roles they have not previously held. This is where knowledge transfer becomes essential, and where many succession plans quietly weaken.
Knowledge transfer does more than protect the organization from sudden departures. It pushes people out of their comfort zones, forces learning, and breaks down functional silos. Done well, it helps leaders think beyond their current responsibilities and builds confidence across the team.
There are several practical ways to make this happen.
- Job pairing is often the most accessible place to start. In this model, leaders in related functions, such as infrastructure and application development, share ownership and decision-making. Neither operates in isolation, and both gain visibility into the other’s world.
- Job sharing takes this a step further, creating shared accountability rather than simple backup coverage. Rotational assignments are the most comprehensive approach, exposing leaders to multiple areas of IT over time. That said, rotations require a higher level of organizational maturity and executive buy-in. They can be disruptive, and they demand patience.
Knowledge transfer is uncomfortable by design. That discomfort is exactly what prepares people to lead beyond the roles they were hired for. Not every organization can jump straight to rotations, and that’s fine. Even limited pairing or shared responsibility builds resilience.
When knowledge is distributed, leadership gaps don’t turn into emergencies.
HR as the Backbone
At this stage, succession planning can no longer rely on informal judgment alone. To be sustainable, it requires structure, and that is where HR plays an important role.
HR provides the structure and tools needed to move from informal conversations to durable plans. That includes understanding skills, performance, and potential across the leadership team. Performance-versus-potential assessments, for example, can help identify individuals who are not only strong performers, but also capable of growing into broader roles.
Just as importantly, HR helps surface career intent.
Capability and aspiration are not the same thing. A leader may be highly effective in their current role and still have no desire to expand beyond it.
Succession planning breaks down when organizations assume ambition.
This is one of the most common gaps I see when working with organizations on leadership planning. Strong performers are often assumed to be future leaders, without meaningful conversations about what they actually want, or what they’re prepared to take on.
From Risk Management to Organizational Flexibility
Succession planning is often framed as insurance, a way to reduce risk if someone leaves. But organizations that do it well gain something more valuable: flexibility.
Teams with shared knowledge and real leadership depth can reorganize faster, take on new initiatives without burnout, and respond to change with confidence. Internally, this gives CIOs the ability to deploy talent where it’s needed most.
Externally, it signals stability and preparedness to boards, executives, and customers.
In working with organizations across diverse industries, I’ve seen how intentional hiring shapes long-term outcomes. In one healthcare organization, the CIO came to us knowing they didn’t yet have a clear successor, but also recognizing that the next leadership hire would matter more than any plan on paper. We were asked to help place a VP who could stabilize the function in the near term, while also having the capacity to grow into broader responsibility over time. That leader was hired with development in mind, given exposure beyond their core domain, and prepared with future leadership needs in view. So when the organization later faced a leadership transition, it wasn’t scrambling to fill a gap.
The bench was already in place.
Succession planning doesn’t start when a role opens. It started with who you already brought in and how you prepared them after they arrived.
A Plan You Don’t Revisit Isn’t a Plan
Succession planning is not a one-time exercise.
- Roles evolve.
- People change.
- Business priorities shift.
- A static plan quickly becomes irrelevant.
Succession planning works best when it is treated as an ongoing leadership responsibility rather than a document created and set aside. Effective succession plans are revisited regularly, at least twice a year, and often quarterly. Depth charts are reassessed. Critical roles are revalidated. Development progress is reviewed. A plan that is not revisited becomes irrelevant.
As organizations evolve, so must their bench.
Joe Gross is President and Managing Partner of CIO Partners®, a leading retained executive search firm specializing in technology leadership engagements across all industry verticals. Now celebrating 25 years in business since the firm was founded by a former CIO, CIO Partners is uniquely positioned to provide access to the top 5% of candidates at the C-suite, VP, and director levels across all technology functions.
