Succession is named in governance codes as a standing board responsibility, not an event handled when a chief executive resigns.
Why it matters when the plan changes
A succession decision is made under time pressure, in public, with a shortlist that was mostly assembled before anyone knew it would be needed. The preparation determines the options. A board that starts the work when the seat opens is choosing from whoever is visible, which is a different question from who can carry the plan. Governance codes name succession as a standing board responsibility for this reason, sitting alongside composition and evaluation rather than treated as a single event triggered by departure.
The tension is between the leader the company has and the plan the company has just adopted. Succession discussions gravitate toward replacing like with like, because the incumbent is the most available description of what the job requires. The plan is often asking for something the previous holder never had to do. Ongoing identification of people who could take the role, developed well before the vacancy exists, is what allows the plan itself, rather than the previous holder, to set the specification.
In practice
A board runs a strong process against a role description written four years earlier, before the shift to a product-led model. The appointment is excellent against that description and mismatched to the plan now in force. Nobody made an error in the process; the specification was measuring the previous strategy.
Evidence
Governance codes treat composition, succession and evaluation as a standing board responsibility rather than an event.
Financial Reporting Council, UK Corporate Governance Code (2024)Succession planning is defined as the ongoing identification and development of people who can take leadership roles when they become vacant.
Succession planning, Wikipedia (2026)
What it cannot tell you
CEO succession describes the board's preparation and decision process; it does not predict whether a chosen successor will perform, nor does it fix a role specification that has gone stale. The term is silent on strategy quality itself: a well-run succession can still install the wrong plan's leader if the plan was never re-specified.
Questions
Before it is needed, and continuously. The Financial Reporting Council's UK Corporate Governance Code (2024) treats succession, alongside composition and evaluation, as a standing board responsibility rather than an event. A board beginning work only when the seat opens is choosing among whoever happens to be visible.
The plan now in force, not the previous holder. The most available description of the job is what the incumbent did, and that describes the strategy the company was executing before. Specifying against the current plan is the step most often skipped under time pressure.
Only in the time available, which is why the preparation matters so much more. The questions are identical; what changes is whether there is room to answer them properly. Everything not decided in advance gets decided in a fortnight, in public, with incomplete information.
Succession planning, Wikipedia (2026) defines the ongoing identification and development of people who can take leadership roles when they become vacant. That evidence, read against what the plan demands now, is what supports the decision, not a ranking of candidates or a career prediction.
The board. Evidence, a recommendation and an explicit statement of what argues against it can all be supplied, and the appointment stays with the people who carry the consequence. Any arrangement that blurs that line weakens the accountability the appointment is supposed to establish.