Questions this post answers
- Is my succession plan a real plan or a binder in a drawer?
- Who takes over, and when — really?
- What conversation about letting go can I only have with peers — not my board or my family?
On April 20, Apple announced that Tim Cook will hand the CEO job to John Ternus on September 1. That’s eight days after this posts.
Look at what Apple actually published. A named person. A fixed date. A board that approved it unanimously. Four months of public runway between the announcement and the handoff. And a defined role for the outgoing CEO — Cook becomes executive chairman with a specific remit. It is clear that Tim Cook and the Apple Board have been working on this for years.
Now hold your plan up against that list.
Most of the ones I have seen come up short. There’s a document. It names someone, or two someones. It says “in the event of” and goes in a drawer.
Deloitte Private’s 2026 Family Business Survey found that 85% of respondents agree that strategic CEO succession planning is critical to long-term success. Only 57% have an established plan, and fewer than a quarter — 23% — are actively implementing one.
That second gap is the whole problem. An established plan is a document. An implemented one has somebody doing something differently on a regular schedule over time.
And the clock isn’t theoretical. In the same survey, 78% expect a CEO transition within the next decade and 42% expect one within three to five years. Thirty percent say their planning is already behind schedule.
So here’s the test I’d put to your plan. Can the person you’ve named actually run your seat — with real decision rights, a board sign-off, and a date? Or have you written a comforting sentence and called it a plan?
Naming a successor isn’t the hard part. The hard part is what naming a successor forces you to admit.
Maybe you have stayed too long. Maybe your heir apparent isn’t ready. Maybe you don’t have one. Or maybe your identity is fused to your title in a way you don’t want to say out loud.
There’s one more thing that never makes it into the binder: what you do the day after you pass the torch. Apple gave Cook a title and a remit. Most owners have neither — and an owner with nowhere to go will find reasons to stay.
None of those sentences get spoken to your board. Fewer still to your family, who have money and feelings riding on the answer.
So they don’t get spoken at all. And the binder stays in the drawer another year.
That’s the conversation a table of peers is built for. People who have sat in your chair have nothing to lose by asking “Is it time?” and won’t flinch at the honest answer, “I don’t know yet.”
Succession is strategic planning at its most personal. It’s also the plan you’re most likely to avoid, precisely because no one in your building can make you have it.