Not sure if I agree with you on that one. Even though yours is the conventional wisdom, I have to think that things are changing. The fact that good succession planning increases retention and reduces recruiting costs (becuase internal candidates can be more readily found) makes the case, for me at least, that it’s time for succession to work it way down through the biggest organizations and even into medium sized businesses as well.

It’s true that I have also never figured out why people try doing succession on very broad populations. Even for very large companies, we’re talking about the top couple hundred employees – a fraction of 1%.

A critical mistake is that when this succession population grows, you’re really starting in on career development, performance management, and general talent management. Succession can easily grow out of control.