Board Succession Checklist (PDF)
The standing items a board should hold on succession: annual cadence, emergency coverage per critical role, the readiness questions worth asking management, and the metrics that show whether any of it is working.
What's inside
- Governance cadence: what the board reviews annually, quarterly, and on trigger events
- Emergency coverage checklist: interim authority, communication sequence, and the one-page plan every critical role needs
- Readiness review: the questions that separate a real bench from a slide
- Board reporting metrics: internal fill rate, bench coverage, successor retention
Boards own succession outcomes but see the process through whatever management chooses to present. This checklist arms the board side of that conversation: the standing agenda items, the emergency questions that must have answers before they are urgent, and the handful of metrics that reveal whether the succession plan is an operating system or a deck.
We gate this one behind an email because it comes with a short follow-up series on running board succession reviews. The free succession planning template on this site is ungated if that is what you came for.
See where your bench breaks before it matters.
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