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  • Your Succession Plan Is Only as Strong as Your Development Discipline

    Your Succession Plan Is Only as Strong as Your Development Discipline

    •

    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Part 4 of a 5-Part Series on the 4D Talent Continuity Framework: Develop

    In the first issue of this series, I introduced my 4D Talent Continuity Framework: Design, Diagnose, Develop, Defend.

    • Design ensures the system, practices, and tools are built to address real business risk.
    • Diagnose reveals how exposed the organization actually is.

    In case you missed it, last week’s issue focused on Diagnose, the discipline of conducting talent reviews and talent calibration that surface real succession risk rather than organizational optimism.

    Once risk becomes visible, the next question is unavoidable:

    What are we doing to close the gap?

    That is the work of the third D: Develop.

    And this is where many succession plans fail. They don’t fail because organizations lack good intentions, but because development is treated casually rather than rigorously.

    Why Development Often Breaks Down

    In most companies, the talent review ends with a list of successor candidates and a few vague development notes. The system assumes progress will follow. In reality, several predictable breakdowns occur.

    Weak Individual Development Plans (IDPs)
    Development plans often default to classroom training, online modules, or conferences. These activities may build knowledge but rarely build leadership capability.

    Research on adult learning consistently shows that leaders develop primarily through experience, not instruction. The widely cited 70–20–10 model suggests that roughly 70% of leadership development comes from challenging assignments, 20% from coaching and relationships, and 10% from formal training (Lombardo & Eichinger, Center for Creative Leadership).

    When IDPs emphasize the 10% and neglect the 70%, readiness does not improve.

    Successor Candidates Are Never Told They Are Being Developed

    Some organizations avoid informing successor candidates that they are part of the pipeline. The rationale is understandable: leaders worry about creating entitlement or promising roles that may never materialize.

    The downside is significant.

    When high-performing leaders do not understand that they are being invested in for larger roles, they often interpret development assignments as additional workload rather than strategic preparation. Motivation drops, and retention risk increases.

    Other organizations take the opposite approach and explicitly tell successor candidates they are being prepared for future leadership roles. This can increase engagement and commitment, but it also carries risk if advancement does not materialize.

    In practice, the most effective approach is transparent investment without guaranteed outcomes: communicating clearly that the organization is developing the individual for broader leadership responsibility while avoiding promises tied to specific roles.

    Successor Candidates Are Already Overloaded

    Another predictable failure occurs when organizations assign development on top of already unsustainable workloads.

    High performers often carry the heaviest operational responsibilities. When development activities are layered onto full workloads, the message is clear:

    “Grow into the next role on your own time.”

    The result is predictable. Development stalls, burnout increases, and the very leaders the organization hopes to retain begin considering external opportunities.

    Development That Never Leaves The Classroom

    Formal training has value, but it rarely changes leadership behavior by itself.

    What accelerates readiness is experiential leadership exposure:

    • Cross-functional strategic projects
    • Enterprise initiatives with visible impact
    • Temporary leadership of unfamiliar teams
    • Stretch assignments – Not impossible but challenging
    • Direct coaching from senior executives

    These experiences place successor candidates in situations where judgment, influence, and resilience are tested in real time.

    Adults learn leadership the same way pilots learn to fly: through guided experience, not theory alone.

    The Hidden Barrier: Accountability

    Even when organizations design strong development plans, execution often fails because cross-functional assignments are difficult to negotiate.

    The dynamic is familiar:

    • The direct manager wants the successor candidate focused on current team deliverables.
    • HR identifies development opportunities but lacks authority to enforce participation.
    • The employee cannot realistically manage both workloads without structural support.

    As a result, the most valuable development experiences never happen.

    In mid-sized companies, this tension can only be resolved at the executive team level.

    When development assignments are framed as enterprise investments rather than optional favors between departments, priorities change. The CEO and CHRO must signal clearly that preparing future leaders is a shared responsibility across the organization.

    Without that alignment, development remains theoretical.

    The Cost of Development Failure

    Organizations often underestimate the financial consequences of weak development execution.

    Leadership readiness gaps lead to:

    • Expensive external searches for roles that could have been filled internally
    • Mis-promotions when candidates are elevated before they are prepared
    • Delays in strategic execution while leaders ramp into new responsibilities

    Research from Gallup and Center for Creative Leadership suggests that failed leadership transitions and executive turnover can cost organizations 1.5–2 times the leader’s annual salary once search costs, lost productivity, and disruption are considered.

    For senior leadership roles, the real cost can reach into the hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars depending on the scope of the role.

    Development is not a learning activity.

    It is risk mitigation.

    What Rigorous Development Looks Like

    Organizations that build strong leadership pipelines treat development with the same discipline they apply to strategy execution.

    They:

    • Create specific, time-bound development plans for successor candidates
    • Ensure development includes visible, cross-functional leadership experiences
    • Pair experiential learning with coaching from senior leaders
    • Protect the time required for development rather than adding it as extra work
    • Hold leaders accountable for developing talent beyond their own teams

    When this happens, succession planning shifts from theoretical readiness to demonstrated capability.

    Next week, we turn to the final discipline in the framework: Defend.

    Because identifying and developing strong leaders is not enough. Organizations must also protect them from external poaching, professional burnout, and the pressures that drive high performers out the door.

    Succession planning does not end with development.

    It ends when leadership continuity is secure.

  • Most Succession Plans Are Weaker Than Leaders Think

    Most Succession Plans Are Weaker Than Leaders Think

    •

    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    What CHROs are expected to see before the board does

    Your CFO leaves unexpectedly.

    On paper, you have a succession plan.

    Within weeks, it becomes clear that the “ready-now” successor is struggling. Decisions slow. Confidence erodes. The CEO starts fielding uncomfortable questions from the board.

    This scenario is more common than most organizations admit. And it’s not because companies ignore succession planning, but because they overestimate bench strength, underestimate capacity limits, and fail to stress-test assumptions under real conditions.

    When succession risk is exposed, the cost is not abstract:

    • Delayed strategic execution
    • Lost revenue or stalled transformation initiatives
    • Increased executive search and onboarding costs
    • Preventable turnover of high-potential talent
    • Credibility erosion for the CHRO with the CEO and board

    This checklist is not an HR framework. It is a succession risk scan for CHROs accountable for outcomes.

    The CHRO Succession Risk Checklist

    A test for the quality of your decisions regarding leadership continuity

    As you review each section, ask yourself one question: Would I stand confidently behind this with the CEO and board?

    1. Do we agree on which roles truly put the enterprise at risk?

    For each senior role, ask:

    • If this role were vacant for six months, what would it cost the business in delayed strategy, revenue impact, or operational risk?
    • How difficult would it be to replace this role externally within 6–12 months?
    • Where is decision authority concentrated in a single individual?

    Risk signal:
    If too many roles are labeled “critical,” investment and attention are likely misallocated. The real points of failure may be under-protected.

    2. Are our “ready-now” claims defensible under scrutiny?

    For each critical role:

    • Who could step in within 12 months without materially disrupting the business?
    • Who is promising, but not yet ready?
    • Who shows-up on a succession slate but would struggle in practice?

    Risk signal:
    Most organizations believe they have more ready-now successors than they actually do. The gap is only revealed during an actual transition.

    3. Have we assessed capacity, not just capability?

    Consider:

    • Which leaders are already covering multiple roles or operating at sustained overload?
    • Whether successors could realistically absorb additional scope without performance degradation
    • Where the organization depends on “heroic effort” to function

    Risk signal:
    A successor with no capacity is not a successor. Ignoring capacity erosion turns even strong benches into fragile ones.

    4. Where is leadership flow blocked?

    Look for:

    • Roles occupied by solid performers with no upward trajectory
    • Managers who resist releasing strong talent
    • Key roles, assignments, or experiences that only a few people ever get access to

    Risk signal:
    Succession failures are rarely caused by a lack of talent. They are caused by tolerated bottlenecks that stall movement and drive high-potential attrition.

    5. Would our plan hold up under non-ideal conditions?

    Pressure-test assumptions:

    • A sudden executive exit
    • Accelerated retirements
    • Rapid growth, restructuring, or acquisition activity

    Risk signal:
    Most succession plans assume ideal timing. Real disruption exposes untested assumptions quickly.

    6. How thin is our bench where it matters most?

    Go beyond counting names:

    • How many credible successors exist per critical role?
    • Where are we overly dependent on external hiring?
    • Are gaps concentrated in specific functions or leadership levels?

    Risk signal:
    Bench strength often looks acceptable in aggregate but is dangerously thin in the roles that matter most.

    7. Would our succession decisions stand up to challenge?

    Ask:

    • Are decisions based on clear, consistent criteria?
    • Would independent leaders reach similar conclusions?
    • Is the process resilient to politics, favoritism, or pressure?

    Risk signal:
    If succession decisions cannot be clearly explained and consistently defended, they will be challenged when it matters most; i.e., often by the CEO or board after a transition has already gone wrong. At that point, the issue is no longer talent readiness, but the credibility of the CHRO’s judgment.

    The Bottom Line

    Succession planning is one of the few areas where the CHRO’s credibility is tested in real time. When a transition happens, the question will not be whether a process existed, but whether the decisions behind it were sound.

    Most companies are more exposed than they realize. It is the CHRO’s job to see the risk clearly before the board does.

    A Smart Next Step (Before the Questions Escalate)

    If this checklist surfaced a level of discomfort, you are not alone. Before raising succession risk with the CEO or board, many CHROs want a private, objective view of where they are exposed without internal politics or premature conclusions.

    That is why I offer a Confidential Succession Risk Review:

    • 30–45 minutes
    • Focused on a small number of truly critical roles
    • Designed to clarify where assumptions hold and where they don’t
    • No commitment, no internal disruption

    The goal is simple: To help you see the risk clearly and decide what action, if any, is required.

    If leadership continuity is part of your mandate, clarity is not optional.

    Read more about how leader burnout affects succession strategy.

    Get to know me on LinkedIn.

  • How Leader Burnout Impacts Your Succession Planning Strategy

    How Leader Burnout Impacts Your Succession Planning Strategy

    •

    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Most succession plans do not fail because companies misjudge talent. They fail because organizations assess successor readiness without assessing their capacity.

    In many mid-sized companies, the succession pipeline looks strong on paper. High-potentials are identified. Benches are full. Diversity targets are met. Yet promotions stall, successors hesitate, and critical roles sit open longer than expected. The issue is not talent quality. It is capacity erosion.

    Capacity erosion occurs when a leader remains capable and committed, but sustained overload steals the margin needed to absorb additional scope, complexity, or pressure. When this goes unmeasured, succession plans appear sound when they are actually fragile.

    Burnout is the mechanism behind that erosion. We are not talking about burnout as a wellness concern, but as a leading indicator of leadership continuity risk.

    The Succession Assumptions That No Longer Hold True

    Most succession models rely on three assumptions:

    1. Capability scales as leaders move up
    2. Readiness increases with exposure and time
    3. Aspiration remains stable when performance is strong

    Burnout disrupts all three.

    Burnout reflects a sustained mismatch between role demands and the individual’s ability to perform the work. When that mismatch persists, leaders may remain capable and committed, but their capacity to absorb additional scope, ambiguity, and pressure diminishes. Succession planning rarely accounts for this erosion.

    Learn more about ways to spot early burnout in the workplace.

    How Capacity Risk Shows Up in Succession Systems

    The following patterns are common in organizations where burnout has begun to negatively impact leadership continuity:

    • Successors stall after being identified. Once named, successors are expected to accelerate. Instead, development plateaus. This is not disengagement; it is energy conservation in response to already-maxed capacity.
    • High potentials decline roles that look like logical next steps. Burned-out high performers make rational trade-offs. They opt out of roles they perceive as unsustainable, even when ambition and capability remain intact.
    • Leadership benches look strong on paper but do not convert into movement. Performance history and potential ratings ignore depletion. Organizations measure who could do the job, not who can sustain it now.
    • Successors don’t value the promotion. Recent workforce research shows that promotion is no longer a default career goal for many employees. Surveys indicate that more than 40% of employees are turning down promotions, often citing workload and stress concerns even when the roles offer higher status or pay (Forbes, 2025). At the same time, senior women leaders, critical for strong pipelines, are less likely than their male counterparts to target the next level. This aligns with broader trends of leaders reassessing leadership roles under sustained strain (Business Insider, 2025). These trends suggest that when qualified internal candidates consistently avoid certain roles, it reflects not a broken pipeline but a role design that lacks sustainable capacity.

    These are not isolated talent problems. They are structural indicators that succession risk already exists.

    The Diversity Implication

    This dynamic disproportionately affects women in succession pipelines.

    Women in succession pipelines often absorb significant invisible labor inside the organization; e.g., mentoring, culture stabilization, and people management work that expands their role’s responsibility, without expanding authority. In many cases, this is layered onto substantial responsibilities outside of work.

    When succession decisions converge with this reality, organizations advance representation goals without assessing or redesigning load. Hesitation or stall is then misread as confidence or aspiration issues, when the real constraint is capacity erosion.

    This is not a failure of the individual; it is a systems design failure.

    Why Burnout Belongs in Succession Planning

    Burnout does not predict who will leave next quarter. It predicts where succession plans will fail under real conditions.

    A successor who is technically ready but operating at depleted capacity represents greater continuity risk than one who still requires development. When burnout indicators are present among successors or critical incumbents, bench strength is theoretical, not operational.

    Read more about how executive burnout undermines your succession plan.

    Practical Shifts CHROs Can Make

    This does not require a new succession framework. It requires sharpening the one you already have.

    • Expand risk discussions beyond flight risk. Assess capacity, load, and sustainability alongside readiness.
    • Use validated diagnostic tools with successors, hi-pos and critical talent pools. Instruments like the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS) provide objective data that elevates talent discussions from gut-feel to evidence. They diagnose the structural issues so you can fix them.
    • Treat role sustainability as a succession variable. If burnout risk appears across multiple potential successors, redesign the roles. This finding belongs in the succession conversation.

    The Strategic Reframe

    Succession planning is not about identifying who could step into a role. It is about ensuring leaders can sustain the roles your organization requires.

    Burnout is one of the strongest indicators that leadership continuity is at risk. Organizations that incorporate capacity assessment into succession planning move from reactive replacement to durable leadership pipelines.

    If you are preparing for upcoming talent reviews or succession discussions and want to integrate capacity risk into your leadership continuity strategy, I welcome the conversation. This is where many succession plans fail, and where they can be materially strengthened.

    Connect with me on LinkedIn.

  • Succession Planning Is Not the Problem. Execution Is.

    Succession Planning Is Not the Problem. Execution Is.

    •

    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    I’ve spent nearly three decades inside talent management and leadership development. One thing I’ve learned is this: Succession planning does not fail at talent identification. It fails at execution.

    Most mid-sized organizations are good at identifying top talent; i.e., individuals who are both high performing and high potential. They use 9-Box grids, risk of loss ratings, and succession slates. Where the process consistently breaks down is what happens next.

    For mid-sized companies (roughly 500–2,000 employees), that breakdown is costly. You don’t have the luxury of prolonged external searches. You don’t have deep bench redundancy. And when critical talent sees no credible, challenging path forward, they do not wait patiently. They disengage. Or they leave.

    Research consistently shows that companies with strong, actively managed succession practices outperform peers, with profit margins up to 18% higher and employee retention 10-15% stronger. That return does not come from identification alone. It comes from disciplined execution of leadership development.

    It is time to retire the passive Individual Development Plan and replace it with something far more operational.

    The Mid-Size Risk: When Stagnation Turns into Burnout

    In mid-sized organizations, succession planning often stalls in two damaging ways.

    The Plateau Effect High performers are wired for growth. When development plans remain theoretical (no real stretch, no material change in scope or influence) people experience stagnation. Prolonged stagnation is one of the fastest accelerants of professional burnout – especially in combination with long-term exhaustion that stems from high workload.

    The Development Vacuum When succession plans are not actively resourced or enforced, the message is unmistakable: “We see your potential, but we’re not prepared to organize the business around developing it.” That gap between promise and action erodes trust quickly.

    The solution is not more training catalogs or better-worded IDPs. The solution is to operationalize how adults actually learn.

    Why Experience Matters: The 70–20–10 Reality

    Most leadership development frameworks reference the 70–20–10 model:

    • 70% of development comes from on-the-job, stretch experiences
    • 20% comes from coaching, mentoring, and feedback
    • 10% comes from formal training or coursework

    While the exact percentages vary by study, the underlying principle is well-established: adults do not fundamentally change behavior in classrooms. They change through experience, reflection, and accountability.

    Yet many succession plans still over-invest in the 10%; e.g., courses, programs, and workshops, while leaving the 70% to chance. That gap is where execution fails.

    The Development Mandate: Turning Potential into Readiness

    A modern succession plan requires what I call a Development Mandate. A Development Mandate is a non-negotiable, time-bound, cross-functional assignment tied directly to a real business outcome. It is not optional. It is not hypothetical. And it is not “extra credit.”

    It is how potential is tested, readiness is validated, and commitment is retained.

    The Problem: A Mandate Sounds Good in Theory but …

    If experiential, cross-functional development is so effective, why does it so rarely materialize after the talent review meeting?

    In practice, I see the same breakdown repeatedly. During talent reviews, leaders agree, often enthusiastically, that cross-functional assignments are the answer. And then, nothing happens.

    In a manufacturing organization I worked with, the succession slate looked strong on paper. Several critical roles had identified successors. Everyone agreed that cross-functional exposure was essential. Yet twelve months later, not a single assignment had been executed.

    Why? Because a mandate alone is not enough.

    Here are the most common barriers I see:

    1. The direct manager is not bought in. Most managers are rewarded for delivering near-term results with constrained resources. Without explicit alignment to strategic talent priorities, development work feels like a threat to execution, not part of it.
    2. Leaders and HR are unsure how to design feasible stretch assignments. Designing cross-functional work for someone who already has a full-time role requires discipline, scope control, and executive sponsorship. Many organizations simply do not have this muscle.
    3. The individual cannot do “extra work” and their day job simultaneously. When mandates are layered on top of existing responsibilities without trade-offs, they become unsustainable. Development fails not because of lack of capability, but because of lack of capacity.
    4. The organization avoids telling the person they’ve been identified as someone with potential. In an effort to manage expectations or perceived risk, companies often withhold transparency. The unintended consequence is predictable: when people do not know they are being prepared for a future role, motivation to absorb additional complexity and risk drops sharply.

    What sits underneath all four barriers is a more fundamental issue: no one owns the design and execution of cross-functional development. Is it the leader’s job? The HR Business Partner’s? The receiving function’s? In most organizations, the answer is unclear. As a result, no one is accountable for:

    • Designing development work that fits alongside a full-time role
    • Negotiating scope and trade-offs across functions
    • Securing explicit prioritization from the CEO or Board
    • Monitoring progress and removing organizational friction

    Without these capabilities, a “mandate” becomes an aspiration, not an operating reality.

    What a Strong Mandate Actually Requires

    The talent review, often anchored by tools like the 9-Box, should do more than label someone as “ready soon.” It should immediately define the experiential gap that must be closed.

    In mid-sized organizations, future leaders must demonstrate cross-functional fluency, decision-making under ambiguity, and enterprise thinking. Examples:

    These assignments do more than develop skill. They reveal learning agility. Learning agility is the ability to absorb feedback, course-correct, and perform in unfamiliar terrain. That capability predicts future success far more reliably than past performance alone.

    Governance, Design, and Authority: The Difference Between Intent and ROI

    For Development Mandates to deliver real business value, they must be deliberately designed, negotiated, and governed.

    • Executive sponsorship is non-negotiable. The mandate must be protected, prioritized, and legitimized
    • Coaching and feedback enable the 20%. Stretch without support is not development. It is risk.
    • Impact is measured by outcomes, not effort. Delivery quality, cross-functional feedback, and business results matter more than hours logged.

    When done well, this level of execution becomes one of the strongest retention signals an organization can send. It communicates investment, trust, and a credible future.

    Final Thoughts and What Comes Next

    Succession planning is not a documentation exercise. It is a living, operating system.

    When development is translated into mandatory, strategically aligned experiences, succession planning becomes a driver of readiness, retention, and return on investment.

    For mid-sized companies, this discipline is not optional. It is the difference between hoping your next leaders are ready and knowing they are.

    If this challenge feels familiar, contact me. A focused diagnostic conversation can quickly surface where execution is breaking down in your succession process.

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  • Will Your Organization’s Talent Review Fail?

    Will Your Organization’s Talent Review Fail?

    •

    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    And What High-Performance Organizations Do Differently for Talent Reviews

    After facilitating more than 100 talent reviews across industries, I have seen a pattern that leaders rarely recognize. Organizations meticulously maintain their physical assets, yet neglect their human assets.

    In manufacturing, machines are inspected daily for safety, calibration, and production output.

    In telecommunications, towers are checked constantly for compliance, signal quality, and operational integrity.

    But when it comes to talent, the only asset capable of creativity, judgment, and innovation, talent assessment becomes an after-thought.

    This oversight is not because leaders do not care. It is because most organizations have never built a disciplined, repeatable system for evaluating and developing their people. And the consequences are some of the costliest problems in business.

    Below are the issues I see most often in broken talent review processes, and they represent the highest financial and organizational impact.

    The Most Common and Most Costly Breakdowns in Talent Reviews

    1. The Wrong People Are Rated “Top Talent”

    High performers are often identified based on popularity, visibility, or personal affinity rather than measurable contributions or leadership behaviors. This leads to misallocated development dollars, stalled innovation, and top performers leaving because they feel unseen.

    Impact: Millions in hidden losses from disengagement, misaligned promotions, and failed succession bets.

    2. Leadership Potential Is Mislabeled

    Many organizations confuse high performance with leadership readiness. As a result, they accelerate people into roles they are not equipped to handle, while overlooking those who actually demonstrate strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, and team leadership capacity.

    Impact: Failed promotions, team instability, and burnout created by leaders who were never prepared to lead.

    3. Talent Data Is Anecdotal, Not Evidence-Based

    Without clear criteria and structured evaluation, talent reviews devolve into a series of stories, opinions, and selective memories. This results in inconsistent ratings, inequitable decisions, and a leadership bench that is built on bias rather than reality.

    Impact: Weak succession pipelines and increased legal and reputational risk.

    4. No Real Follow-Through After the Meeting

    Organizations spend hours debating talent but do not convert insights into action.

    No development plans. No accountability. No leadership conversations. No tracking.

    The result is a process that “feels good” but creates no measurable change.

    Impact: Zero ROI on talent investments and persistent leadership gaps.

    5. Burnout and Flight Risk Go Undetected

    Without structured diagnostics, leaders fail to see early warning signs of burnout, misalignment, and attrition risk.

    By the time someone quits, the organization is already facing productivity loss, replacement costs, and operational disruption.

    Impact: Costly turnover that could have been prevented months earlier with simple, systematic monitoring.

    The Resounding Truth: Human Assets Are Undermanaged

    Across every industry I have worked in, one truth stands out.

    Companies rigorously protect the assets that sit on their balance sheets but they do not rigorously protect the assets that create their future.

    Physical assets deteriorate without maintenance.

    Human assets deteriorate without development, clarity, and leadership.

    Organizations lose their best people not because talent reviews are missing. They lose them because talent reviews lack structure, discipline, and follow-through.

    What High-Performance Organizations Do Instead

    They treat talent as a core operating system:

    • Clear, evidence-based criteria
    • Calibrated evaluations
    • Strength-based talent placement
    • Succession pipelines that reflect reality
    • Leadership accountability for development
    • Annual and quarterly check-ins
    • Diagnostics that surface risk before it becomes crisis

    This is not “HR work.” This is business continuity work.

    The organizations that get this right outperform their peers in retention, innovation, engagement, and speed of execution.

    If you are concerned about leadership gaps, flight risk, or legal exposure tied to biased talent decisions, let’s talk. A brief call can show you exactly where your risk sits, and how to eliminate it.

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  • The Costly and Hidden Risk in Your Succession Plan

    The Costly and Hidden Risk in Your Succession Plan

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    I worked with a mid-sized company preparing for its talent review and succession planning meetings. HRBPs struggled to pull accurate data and managers arrived unprepared. During the session, leaders essentially guessed who was “at risk” of leaving. They added a few names to a spreadsheet, tagged them based on gut feel, and listed vague follow-ups like “connect soon” or “keep an eye out.”

    Six months later, two top contributors (one in senior engineering and one in product strategy) resigned. Both had been labeled “low risk.” Neither had a retention plan. Their departures stalled projects, upset customers, and forced the company into costly external searches because successors weren’t ready. Morale dipped. Momentum slowed.

    That experience stayed with me. When risk and impact assessments remain soft, unstructured, and unmeasured, high performers slip through the cracks. The organization pays for it every time.

    Why Risk-of-Loss and Impact-of-Loss Assessments Fail

    • They rely on gut feel.
      Leaders default to impressions (“She seems happy.” “He’s performing well.”) instead of real indicators like time since last promotion, pay-range position, or mobility history.
    • Impact scoring is inconsistent or inflated.
      Without a shared method, “impact” becomes storytelling. Leaders either exaggerate (“If she leaves, everything collapses”) or minimize (“We can hire someone else”). In reality, neither is accurate.
    • Retention plans (when they exist) don’t get executed.
      Competing pressures and lack of accountability mean most plans fade into the background.
    • Replacing top talent is expensive, even conservatively.
      Replacing an employee typically costs 50 to 150 percent of their salary. (G&A Partners). Senior specialists and executives can reach 200 percent or more. (HR Morning). These figures don’t include losses in knowledge, customer trust, productivity, or team morale. Those impacts compound quietly and significantly.

    A Better Way: Data-Driven Risk, Structured Impact, and Real Execution

    Here is the blueprint I use. It replaces guesswork with clarity, structure, and follow-through.

    1. Build a Composite Risk-of-Loss Score

    • Integrate multiple signals, including:
      • HRIS data (tenure, time since promotion, compensation percentile, mobility history)
      • Burnout and work-environment diagnostics (Areas of Work Life Survey (AWS), Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), engagement surveys)
      • Event triggers (manager changes, promotion windows, declined stretch roles)
      • Qualitative sentiment (manager feedback, pulse-text themes, documented concerns)

    This creates a rolling probability of risk based on real indicators, not impressions.

    2. Implement a Standard Impact-of-Loss Model

    • Define consistent criteria for every role:
      • Recruiting and replacement cost
      • Vacancy days and ramp-up time
      • Strategic significance (clients, product continuity, institutional knowledge)
      • Ripple effects on teams, culture, and project flow

    A shared model eliminates emotional scoring and allows leaders to compare impact in a meaningful way.

    3. Turn Risk and Impact into Action

    • Prioritize talent using a simple risk-by-impact matrix
    • Build individualized retention plans with clear owners, actions, and deadlines
    • Track completion and follow-through, not just planning activity

    4. Pulse Early and Often

    • Burnout and disengagement usually build quietly. Quarterly pulses that incorporate AWS or MBI indicators surface issues long before resignation letters appear.

    5. Use Analytics and AI as Supporting Signals

    • Research shows that fine-tuned language models can outperform traditional attrition-prediction methods when analyzing engagement comments and written feedback (arXiv). Treat these insights as early-warning flags, then validate through conversations, stay interviews, and coaching.

    What This Means for Organizations for Succession Planning

    • Churn is costing you more than you think.
      Even a $120K high performer can cost $120K to $240K or more to replace, before counting lost momentum. (Read more here.)
    • Risk is often hiding in plain sight.
      High performers rarely raise their hands until they have one foot out the door.
    • Without structure, retention becomes reactive.
      Most organizations don’t take action until after a resignation. By then, it’s too late.

    If you want a retention strategy that truly protects your top talent, you need signal, structure, accountability, and execution discipline in your succession planning.

    I’ve created a Retention Diagnostic Checklist that your HRBP or leadership team can use immediately. It’s practical, comprehensive, and designed to reveal blind spots quickly. Contact me if you’d like a copy.

  • Executive Burnout: The Hidden Risk Undermining Your Succession Plan

    Executive Burnout: The Hidden Risk Undermining Your Succession Plan

    •

    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Why Executive Burnout Is a Governance Risk You Can No Longer Ignore 

    For too long, burnout has been treated as a personal wellness issue. Aa sign that someone needs a long weekend, a vacation, or a meditation app. But from the C-suite vantage point, this is the wrong lens.

    Executive and managerial burnout is not a personal failure. It is a governance failure.

    It poses a direct, unmanaged threat to business continuity, leadership pipeline integrity, and organizational capacity.

    What I Saw in 20+ Years Leading Global Talent Processes

    Across my career at global organizations, I facilitated hundreds of Talent Review meetings. These are the rooms where senior leaders passionately debated performance, potential, and succession. Here’s what always struck me:

    Leaders loved Talent Review meetings… but consistently failed in the follow-through.

    • We dutifully assessed performance.
    • We analyzed potential.
    • We flagged flight risks.

    But then?

    Workloads took over. Development plans were untouched. Critical conversations didn’t happen. And flight risks… well, they flew.

    The pattern was painfully predictable:

    • A high-value leader resigns unexpectedly
    • The “ready-now” successor we thought we had wasn’t actually ready
    • We scramble to hire externally
    • Internal leaders lose morale because promotion paths feel blocked

    In every case, the root cause was the same: Weak follow-through. Not weak talent.

    And burnout was almost always in the background.

    The Cost of Executive Pipeline Fragility

    Make no mistake: executive burnout is a multi-million-dollar problem.

    • High-Value Loss: Burnout among executives and managers costs organizations over $20,000 per person annually in lost productivity and diminished performance.
    • Succession Shock: Replacing a critical leader costs 50% to 200% of salary and creates a destabilizing gap in your leadership pipeline.
    • Missed Opportunities: Your best leaders carry the most mission-critical work. When they leave, projects stall because no one else has the context or expertise.
    • Reputation Damage: When an executive leaves due to burnout, the story spreads, eroding employer brand trust faster than any Glassdoor review ever could.

    If you’re a senior leader focused on cost optimization and growth, this is not a people issue. This is a financial and operational liability.

    For further reading: Burnout Doesn’t Send You an Invoice but It’s Already Draining Your Bottom Line

    Conservative synthesis of leader and HiPo research suggests roughly 30–45% of critical successor/high-potential leaders are likely to show moderate-to-high burnout risk.

    Your Succession Plan Is Probably Blind to Burnout

    Traditional succession planning answers one question: Who could step into a bigger job?

    But it doesn’t answer the more urgent one:  Who is burning out in the job they have right now?

    This is the gap that creates unpredicted resignations and the expensive panic that follows.

    How I Bring Governance Discipline to Burnout Risk

    As an Executive Succession Risk Partner, my work is to bring a diagnostic, data-driven lens to what most companies treat as a “soft” issue.

    1. The Future Risk Audit

    Using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS), we assess your critical leadership cohorts. This is not an engagement survey. It is a structural risk audit.

    2. Pinpointing Systemic Failure

    AWS data reveals what’s actually eroding capacity:

    • Workload
    • Fairness
    • Reward
    • Control
    • Community
    • Values misalignment

    This tells us why your leaders are exhausted and which systems are failing them.

    3. The Structural Fix

    We stop blaming individuals and start repairing the organizational mechanics:

    • Workload friction
    • Recognition gaps
    • Decision-making autonomy
    • Value misalignment
    • Leadership capability issues

    These interventions rebuild capacity and strengthen succession integrity.

    The Outcome: Capacity Reclaimed. Succession Secured.

    Structural interventions create measurable gains:

    1. Succession Secured: You protect your most valuable leaders, ensuring pipeline integrity and business continuity.
    1. Capacity Reclaimed
      By removing friction, you recover lost hours, lost energy, and lost productivity — enabling your organization to finally “do more with less.”

    If you can’t afford to lose $20,000 of leadership capacity this year, or risk a sudden vacancy in a critical role, the time to audit your risk is now.

    Interested in assessing the risk inside your own organization?

    Let’s schedule a 15-minute conversation to evaluate the health of your leadership pipeline and the real-world cost of burnout in your succession plan.

    Subscribe to my newsletter on LinkedIn.

  • Bad Leadership Is One of the Biggest Drivers of Burnout

    Bad Leadership Is One of the Biggest Drivers of Burnout

    •

    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    We talk a lot about employee burnout – employee resilience, personal boundaries, and meditation apps. But what we don’t talk nearly enough about is the top driver of burnout inside organizations; i.e., leadership behavior and the psychological safety it creates (or destroys).

    The data is overwhelming:

    • 70% of team climate is influenced directly by the manager (organizational psychology research).
    • Teams with low psychological safety show significantly higher rates of stress, turnover, conflict, errors, and stalled innovation.
    • Leaders account for up to 40% of the variance in employee burnout (McKinsey).

    This isn’t about “bad apples.” It’s about leaders who were promoted without the training or support to create healthy, high-performance environments.

    And the cost is enormous.

    The Hidden Cost of Poor Leadership and Low Psychological Safety

    When psychological safety is low, employees operate under chronic threat response. And that creates a cascading set of losses:

    • Turnover: Employees leave managers, not companies.
    • Lost productivity: Chronic stress reduces cognitive capacity by up to 30%.
    • Higher healthcare premiums: Burnout costs between $4,000 and $21,000 per employee annually, depending on the level of the role.
    • Presenteeism: The “I’m here, but I’m barely functioning” cost.
    • Absenteeism: More sick days and stress-related health issues.
    • Lower innovation: People will not share new ideas if they fear being judged.
    • Slower decision-making: Teams stay quiet until asked, and escalate unnecessarily.
    • Employer brand erosion: Word spreads fast in talent markets.

    This is the Burnout Tax. A silent financial leak created by poor leadership practices.

    What Poor Leaders Consistently Miss: Psychological Safety Is the Engine of Performance

    Most leaders don’t intend to create burnout. But without training, they unintentionally:

    • react defensively
    • communicate inconsistently
    • set unclear expectations
    • reward urgency over quality
    • shut down dissent
    • ignore micro-signals of distress

    These behaviors create a low-safety environment where people simply cannot access their best thinking.

    Psychological safety is not “comfort.” It is the freedom to think, contribute, question, and take smart risks without fear. It’s the foundation of innovation, trust, and sustainable performance.

    How to Assess Psychological Safety (and Burnout Risk) in Your Organization

    Here are the tools that matter most. They are evidence-based, not trendy:

    1. Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)

    The gold standard for measuring burnout, used globally for decades. It assesses:

    • Emotional Exhaustion
    • Depersonalization
    • Diminished Personal Accomplishment

    2. Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS)

    The workplace assessment that reveals why burnout is happening:

    • Workload
    • Control
    • Reward
    • Community
    • Fairness
    • Values alignment

    Together, MBI + AWS provide the most complete view of burnout sources.

    3. Team Interviews or Focus Groups

    Direct, human insight. The nuance you can’t get from surveys alone.

    4. Workload + Decision-Making Analysis

    This exposes:

    • bottlenecks
    • inefficient approval flows
    • unclear ownership
    • decision fatigue
    • role overload

    5. Leadership 360s

    A reality check for leaders: “How you think you’re showing up” vs. “How your team experiences you.”

    The Metrics That Matter (Including Leading Indicators)

    Most organizations rely solely on lagging indicators; i.e., the signs of burnout that appear when it’s already too late:

    • Voluntary turnover
    • Absenteeism
    • Performance drops
    • Exit interviews
    • Formal complaints

    You need these, but they won’t help you intervene early.

    Leading indicators show burnout before it erupts:

    • Increases in workload without resource adjustment
    • Slow or hesitant decision-making
    • Drop in idea-sharing or collaboration
    • More escalations from frontline teams
    • Increased conflict or defensiveness in meetings
    • Reduced participation in optional initiatives

    These indicators tell you: “A burnout storm cloud is forming. Act now.”

    The Skills Leaders Must Learn to Reduce Burnout and Build Psychological Safety

    Psychological safety improves when leaders build specific, behavior-based skills:

    • Deep listening and non-defensive communication
    • Recognizing early burnout signals
    • Giving feedback without triggering threat response
    • Facilitating inclusive conversations
    • Clarity-setting and scope control
    • Managing workload and prioritization
    • Repair conversations after harm
    • Emotional regulation under pressure
    • Coaching skills (not just directing)

    These skills are not “soft.” These are performance skills that drive execution, innovation, and results.

    A Call to Action for Organizations

    If you’re serious about improving performance and retention, and strengthening leadership effectiveness, start with a Psychological Safety & Burnout Audit that includes:

    • MBI + AWS
    • Team Interviews and Focus Groups
    • Workload & Decision-Making Analysis
    • Leadership 360s

    This gives you clear data, clear language, and a clear roadmap for targeted improvement. No guesswork. No blaming individuals. Just evidence, insight, actionable steps and opportunity.

    If you are interested in learning more about a Psychological Safety & Burnout Inventory, contact us.

    Subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter for more.

  • Stop Burnout: Unlock Employee Innovation and Boost Productivity

    Stop Burnout: Unlock Employee Innovation and Boost Productivity

    •

    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Burnout isn’t about weak individuals. Burnout is a silent organizational crisis that is destroying your employees’ ability to think, innovate, and make smart decisions. For leaders demanding high performance, this is a huge financial leak.

    The system is broken, and the cost is measured in millions:

    1. Turnover Time Bomb: The moment your best people leave, you pay huge costs to replace and retrain them.
    2. Presenteeism Trap: Your people are at work, but the damage to their focus and decision-making means their output quality is low. This is worse than absenteeism because you’re paying for mediocre performance.

    Burnout is Everywhere: It’s Already in Your Company

    If you think this problem is unique to other industries, think again. Burnout is now a global epidemic that has been declared an “occupational phenomenon” by the WHO.

    • Prevalence is High: Studies consistently show that up to 70% of professionals report feeling burned out at least once in their career.
    • Managers are Hit Hardest: Middle managers, your critical layer for execution, are often the most exhausted, caught between unrealistic demands from the top and struggling teams below.
    • The Cost is Universal: Whether you’re in tech, finance, or retail, the root causes (unmanageable workload, lack of control, unfairness) exist in every organization.

    You are not immune. Your best people are likely struggling with this right now.

    The Burnout Brain Drain: Why Burnout Equals Bad Decisions

    Burnout isn’t just low energy; it’s a brain function failure that costs you millions in poor judgment:

    • Executive Functions Shut Down: The part of the brain responsible for planning, problem-solving, and good judgment struggles to work. Result: Your staff wastes time on low-priority tasks, makes costly errors, and can’t see the big picture.
    • The “Brain Fog” Trap: Focus and memory fade. If a critical email is missed, or a project detail is forgotten, it’s often the result of chronic cognitive exhaustion, not carelessness.
    • Innovation Blocked: Creativity and adaptability require a fully functioning mind. Burnout actively kills your ability to innovate and respond to market changes.

    For example, I know a CEO who has made Innovation a core company value. Yet, despite this focus, there is no measurement of employee burnout within the organization. This raises a critical question:

    How can true innovation be achieved if the company is experiencing brain drain due to unaddressed burnout?

    Without actively monitoring and addressing burnout, even the most innovative environments risk losing their best talent and stifling creativity.

    ACTION PLAN: 3 Ways Leaders Fix the Cognitive Crash

    Stop prioritizing wellness apps. Start fixing your organization’s design flaws.

    1. STOP Overload: Stop making people do two jobs. Cut non-essential work and enforce boundaries to give the brain time to recover.
    2. GIVE Control: Delegate authority and power, not just tasks. Giving employees control over how and when they work is the most powerful tool against burnout.
    3. MEASURE Risk, Not Just Engagement: Use validated burnout assessments to directly link your organizational culture issues to your turnover costs and error rates.

    Stop letting burnout drain your talent and your profits. It’s time to lead with systemic change.

    To learn more ways to fix burnout and its impact on innovation, creativity and thinking, contact us.

  • Stop Asking Burned Out Thoroughbred Leaders to Win the Race

    Stop Asking Burned Out Thoroughbred Leaders to Win the Race

    •

    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Last week, I was chatting with my neighbor, a former jockey who spent years racing some of the best horses in the country.

    He told me about a horse he once ran too hard. The animal had enormous heart and talent, and even when injured, it tried to push through. But one race changed everything. The horse finished (barely) and was never the same again.

    “Once a thoroughbred breaks,” he said quietly, “he won’t ever run the same again.”

    That line stayed with me. Because I see it play out in workplaces every day. We ask burned out leaders to do more and more.

    The Thoroughbred Leader

    High-performing employees, your thoroughbreds, are the ones who give extra, stay late, and care deeply. They don’t need constant motivation because excellence is already in their blood, in their DNA.

    But when they start to falter, showing signs of exhaustion, cynicism, or self-doubt, leaders often respond with: “We need to get engagement up.” They double down on focus groups, action planning, motivation, goal setting, or pep talks, asking these same employees to “dig deeper” or “recommit.”

    It’s the workplace equivalent of urging an injured racehorse to run faster.

    Burnout Is an Injury, not a Motivation Problem

    Gallup reports that nearly 30% of the workforce is burned out and burnout affects top performers more often.

    Some quick math: In a 500-person company, 15 thoroughbreds (your top talent), working at 75% capacity, costs the company over $560,000 per year.

    When someone is physically, mentally, or emotionally depleted, no amount of focus groups and action planning to improve engagement will restore their performance. Burnout erodes capacity from the inside out and, unless it’s addressed, those employees don’t just leave the company; they lose part of themselves in the process.

    Companies Are Not Thinking About the Cost of Burned Out Leaders

    Most organizations rely on engagement surveys to understand employee well-being. Engagement data tell you how committed people feel, not how depleted they are. Ironically, your team can be 100% committed yet burned out to their core.

    That’s why I use the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS) in my work. These tools reveal why people are struggling, pinpointing root causes like workload, control, recognition, fairness, values alignment, and community.

    When leaders have that data, they can finally fix what’s broken instead of pushing people harder.

    A Better Question: Are my Leaders Healthy Enough to Win the Race?

    Before asking for more engagement, productivity, or discretionary effort, pause and ask: “Are my top performers healthy enough to run?” Because if they’re burned out, they don’t need a pep talk, they need recovery and systemic changes in their work environment.

    Protect your thoroughbreds, and you protect your performance. Ignore their injuries, and you risk losing both.

    What do you think?

    Have you ever seen a “thoroughbred” employee pushed too hard? How did it impact them and the team?

    Interested in learning more about burnout assessment tools? Contact us.

    The Burnout Imperative is a weekly newsletter for CHROs and business leaders. Follow it here on LinkedIn.

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