Prepare your next chief executive in a room they have never sat in
Board readiness for the executives on your succession slate
"The time to prepare isn't after you have been given the opportunity. It's long before that opportunity arises."
— John Wooden
The Gap Is Rarely Identification. It Is Development.
Your succession plan likely names two or three credible internal candidates. That is the part most boards do well. Fewer boards can say whether any of those candidates has ever governed on a corporate board.
Of the 168 new chief executives appointed across the S&P 1500 in 2025, 140 were stepping into the role for the first time, and two-thirds of those arrived with no board service experience, according to Spencer Stuart. They were chosen on operating record, and asked to govern on arrival. And a boardroom teaches by exercise, not by instruction: only 22 percent of chief executives report receiving effective board support in navigating today’s challenges. The boardroom is where judgment is tested, which makes a first year as a new chief executive an expensive place to build it.
Consider the candidates on your list and answer three questions:
1. Where have they held a fiduciary board seat, rather than presenting to a corporate board?
2. When have they been accountable for a decision they did not build, outside the function they run?
3. How would you feel about their first year as your chief executive also being their first year in a boardroom?
Some of your candidates may already serve on your own board as executive directors. That experience is real, and it is a different exercise: inside your boardroom, they are judging a business they help run. Independent judgment is practiced where they have no operating stake and their only contribution is their judgment. Few companies can build that from the inside, which is why I recommend acquiring it somewhere else.
Succession planning works on two clocks: the selection clock and the development clock. The selection clock runs in months, and it is the one most processes start on. The development clock started years earlier, because judgment of that kind is built by repetition in real seats, not by a decision date. So the sharper question may not be who is next, but what they will have done by the time they are needed. You are almost certainly developing these leaders already. The question is whether that development includes a governing seat.
The Question That Rarely Makes It Into The Succession Memo
If we prepare this executive for a boardroom, do we lose them?
It is a fair question, and a common one. In my interviews with hundreds of independent directors, sponsorship tends to read to the executive as evidence that the company sees them in its future. It is an investment that says: we are preparing you for something larger, here.
Withholding it says something as well. The executives with the most options elsewhere are often the ones paying closest attention to whether the company is investing in them.
The practical conditions are real and they are designable. Board service takes time, and the calendar has to be negotiated rather than assumed. A sitting executive is realistically limited to one outside seat. Conflicts, competitive overlap, and your own policy on outside directorships all deserve review before anyone accepts an invitation. None of that is a reason to leave the instrument unused. It is the reason the choice of seat matters, which is most of the work.
Sponsorship Is Not Permission. It Is A Development Assignment.
Most companies handle outside board service as an approval question: someone asks, legal reviews, and an answer comes back. Deliberate sponsorship starts a step earlier and treats the seat as an assignment, chosen for what it will build.
Start with the executive, not the invitation. The right first question is not whether a seat is available. It is which capability this leader needs next, and whether a governing corporate board seat is the fastest way to build it. Sometimes the answer is no, and knowing that early protects everyone.
Choose the seat for the gap you want closed. A different industry, a different ownership structure, a company at a different inflection point.
Then choose on what is knowable. Industry, ownership structure, and company stage are legitimate selection criteria, and they shape what the seat will build. A public company board brings disclosure, quarterly rhythm, and shareholder scrutiny. A private or sponsor-backed board brings concentrated ownership and a different pace. An industry adjacent to yours builds transferable judgment; one far from it builds range. Beyond that, the specifics belong to the inviting board and stay there.
The situational questions are the candidate's to ask, directly, before they accept: what the real mandate is, what the timeline is, what resources sit behind it, and who they would be governing alongside. That conversation is not something the sponsoring company runs, and its answers are not something the executive brings back. It is the first governing exercise they will perform, and it is where I built the Glass Cliff Diagnostic to work.
Prepare them before the first meeting, not after it. Becoming an independent director is not a promotion. It is a pivot. The executives who struggle in a first board seat are seldom the ones who lacked expertise. They are the ones who arrived without having examined the difference between running a business and helping govern one.
Bring the judgment home, not the information. What your executive learns in another boardroom cannot travel as information. Their duty of confidentiality runs to the board they serve, and a leader who blurs that line is demonstrating precisely the judgment you would not want in your top job. What comes home is human capital: capability that belongs to the executive, and through them, to you.
They learn how a board hears a proposal, which changes how they bring one to yours. They learn to weigh a recommendation as a fiduciary rather than as its author, with attention to risk, oversight, and second-order effects. They build the habit of forming a view on incomplete information without owning the execution. They see how another company governs itself, and calibrate their own instincts against a model they did not grow up in. And they arrive fluent in the rhythm of board relations: what a chair needs, what belongs in committee, what to escalate and when.
That capability compounds if someone asks for it. A standing conversation with you or the chief executive, focused on what your executive is learning about governing rather than on anything about the other company, is what turns a seat into development.
Which of your executives should be learning the boardroom now, on another company's board, before they step into your top job?
The Engagement
Corporate-Sponsored Individual Board Advisory is a six-month engagement, funded by the company, built around each executive.
We begin with alignment. Before the work starts, I meet with the sponsor, usually the chief human resources officer, the chief executive, or the nominating and governance chair, to establish what each executive needs to build and what a successful six months would look like from the company's side. Development without a defined destination tends to drift.
The work itself is twice-monthly one-on-one advisory sessions with each executive, and it covers the ground a first governing seat requires: what a board is actually accountable for and how that differs from running a business, how they are positioned and what a board would see when they look, which seats fit the capability they need to build, how to evaluate a situation before accepting it, and how to be effective in the room once they are in it. Where useful, we integrate Hogan or DISC assessments to sharpen self-awareness. This is where the Glass Cliff Diagnostic gets applied to a real invitation, so your executive walks up to the edge with their eyes open.
The sponsor stays informed without sitting in the room. You receive progress against the goals we set at the outset: what has been built, what is underway, and what the executive is working on next. The content of our sessions stays between the executive and me, because candor is what makes the work useful, and an executive who is managing their words is not developing. What you get is the trajectory, not the transcript.
The engagement is funded from talent and succession budgets rather than by the executive, and scoped per person. Many sponsoring companies are preparing two or three leaders at the same time.
Why Me
Preparing a successor for the top job calls for someone who has sat on every side of board service. I serve as an independent director, I served on the nominating and governance committee, and I have spent years inside a global search practice watching how boards actually select the people they invite. I also made this pivot myself, from executive to non-executive director, and then interviewed hundreds of independent directors who did the same, which became the research behind The Boardroom Journey (Wiley) and the frameworks your executive will use.
That combination is the point. A coach may have studied board service without ever serving. An executive search professional or advisor may place corporate board directors without ever having been one. A sitting director may know how they got their own seat without knowing why it worked, or whether it would work for your executive. Each holds one piece. Your executive is prepared by someone who holds all three: the seat, the selection, and the research into what actually transfers.
More on my background, board service, and published work
Why board-readiness education is a strong start, and what completes it
Two Ways To Begin
If you are weighing this for specific leaders
Start a conversation. Tell me the shape of the situation: the company, your role, and how many executives you are considering preparing. I will follow up to talk through fit and what a first engagement would look like. No prepared pitch, and no obligation.
If you are earlier than that
I am conducting a study on what sponsoring companies gain when they place their executives on outside boards, the question the research has left open. If your company has done this, or is considering it, I would value your perspective, and you would see the findings first. It is a conversation, not a commitment.