Why Corporate India Fails At Leadership Succession Planning

Leadership transitions are meant to signal continuity. Yet in most Indian companies, successions still unfold like last-minute theatre productions. The curtain rises, the new actor steps in, the applause is polite, and the audience hopes the script will hold.

What is often missing is not the talent, but the actual stable preparation. The invisible part of succession is the shaping of readiness, long before the announcement, and it is what separates enduring institutions from fragile ones.

We talk of leadership as though it were a baton passed neatly in a relay. In truth, it is closer to a long apprenticeship, an equal parts transfer of context and judgment. Titles can change overnight. Wisdom cannot.

The art of succession lies in grooming people to think, decide and behave as owners of a legacy, not as occupants of a chair. Yet too many boards and promoters confuse succession planning with naming a successor.

Across boardrooms in India, succession has become a word that evokes nervous smiles. It is discussed with discretion, postponed with diplomacy, and then executed in haste. The result is predictable. Transitions that should have felt organic instead feel abrupt. Leadership is a living culture that needs to be absorbed.

In family-run firms, succession is often entangled with emotion. The founder’s identity is tied so deeply to the enterprise that letting go feels like erasure. The successor, meanwhile, is burdened by comparison and expectation. The conversation that should begin early often happens late, when fatigue or crisis forces the issue. Too much time is spent on deciding who, and too little on preparing how.

Professional corporations face a different version of the same issue. The process is formal, but not always fertile. Boards tend to focus on succession charts and competency matrices, as if leadership readiness were a data point. The conversation remains managerial, not human. Grooming a successor should be of creating continuity of able character.

I often tell leaders that true succession is not a moment, it is a movement. It begins the day a leader starts to mentor their next line. It is visible in how they delegate, how they listen, how they let others fail safely. It is a visible act of stewardship. The tragedy is that many senior leaders guard power as if passing it on diminishes them. In reality, it defines them.

India’s economic landscape makes this even more urgent. Over the next decade, thousands of mid-sized and family-owned businesses will face generational handovers. Many promoters who began in the liberalisation years are now in their sixties. Their successors grew up in a different world — global, digital, impatient. The cultural gap between these generations is widening. If the handover of authority does not include the handover of understanding, the business will stumble even before the market tests it.

Good succession planning is not about cloning the existing leader. It is about preserving the institution’s core while allowing new imagination to enter. Every successor must earn legitimacy, not inherit it. The best transitions allow the past to be honoured without letting it become a cage.

Here lies one of corporate India’s unspoken weaknesses. Too many boards remain ceremonial rather than strategic. They meet regularly but rarely engage meaningfully on leadership depth. Independent directors hesitate to question succession timelines for fear of seeming intrusive. Promoters treat succession as a family secret rather than a governance obligation. The result is that leadership continuity becomes an accident of circumstance, not an outcome of foresight. A board that cannot ask “Who next?” in time has already failed its duty of care.

The discomfort runs deeper than structure. It is cultural. We admire charismatic founders but rarely celebrate builders of systems. The mythology of the lone leader is stronger than the discipline of institutional continuity. Boards are happy to be briefed, less willing to probe. Few insist that succession planning be treated with the same rigour as capital allocation or risk oversight. When the inevitable transition comes, the organisation realises that what it mistook for a pipeline was merely proximity to power.

The strongest transitions are those where the outgoing leader actively mentors, not supervises. Where the board plays the role of guardian, not spectator. Where the successor is exposed to complexity early — dealing with setbacks, stakeholders and uncomfortable truths.

Succession that fails is often succession that stayed invisible for too long. When readiness is not cultivated in daylight, uncertainty festers in corridors. Gossip fills the silence. Senior executives begin to position themselves. The organisation drifts into factions of hope and doubt. In that fog, no successor, however competent, can begin cleanly.

The invisible succession is not just a corporate problem. It mirrors a wider Indian discomfort with the idea of letting go. In our families, politics, and public institutions, transitions are often delayed until the last possible moment. We mistake control for continuity. We forget that leadership, like life, draws strength from its own impermanence.

The antidote is not more policy but more courage. Boards must have honest conversations about succession long before the need arises. Leaders must build visibility around their mentoring. Shareholders must ask how organisations are preparing for change, not just performing today. A company that cannot replace its top leader smoothly has not built a leadership culture. It has built dependency.

There is also a moral dimension to succession. Every leader holds the enterprise in trust for those who will follow. To leave without preparing is a breach of that trust. It denies the next generation the learning that only time can provide. It leaves them to reconstruct the culture from fragments. A well-planned transition, by contrast, is an act of generosity. It says, “I have done my part. Now it is yours to shape.”

The next decade will test this truth across India Inc. Family-owned firms will confront generational renewal. Start-ups will mature and outgrow their founders. Even large, listed companies will face transitions as a new cohort of professionals rises. Those that invest early in readiness will find that continuity is not an accident. Those that wait will discover that leadership gaps are the costliest vacancies of all.

In the end, every leader writes two legacies. One is what they build. The other is who they leave behind to carry it forward. The first is visible in profits and press releases. The second, though invisible, decides whether the story continues