When the CEO leaves, what happens next?
The majority of UK organisations are unprepared for leadership change, and just 14% say they have a formal succession plan in place, according to new research from Robert Walters. The lack of succession plan is worrying when taking the state of the industry as a whole into account. According to Vestd’s ‘C-Suite Churn Report’ published in 2025, the average tenure in a C-suite role is four years and five months, and CEO roles in the tech sector are seeing a turnover up 50% against the six-year average. CEO exists have also been hitting record highs in recent years; January 2022 saw 222 resignations, marking the highest number of resignations of CEOs since records began in 2003.
The lack of succession plan paints a stark picture of corporate unpreparedness: 39% of organisations have no succession plan, and a further 8% are unsure whether one exists at all. At the same time, 70% of leaders reported a shortage of senior talent, and nearly half describing this shortage as significant.
“There is a clear gap between how concerned organisations are about senior talent shortages and how prepared they are for leadership change,” explained Daniel Harris, Managing Director, Robert Walters UK&I. He pointed to AI, geopolitical uncertainty, and economic pressures as factors driving more frequent leadership transitions, warning that businesses without plans in place were “leaving themselves exposed to significant operational risk.”
The consequences of getting leadership transitions wrong can be severe. Analysis by McKinsey suggests that when leadership transitions are managed well, around 90% of teams go on to meet three-year performance targets, implying that the reverse can carry a heavy cost.
Adam Gordon, Global Head of Talent Development at Robert Walters, noted that the challenge cuts across organisations of every size. “Senior talent is one of the hardest resources to replace, and finding the right long-term successor can take time,” he said, pointing to interim leadership as one way companies can maintain stability while longer-term decisions are made.
The pipeline problem runs deeper than formal planning, however. Two in five organisations, 41%, said they were struggling to identify and develop strong internal successors at all. Harris described succession planning as fundamentally about “futureproofing the organisation,” combining internal development with external hiring to build long-term resilience.
The business environment is being heavily adapted due to rapid technological, economic, and geopolitical change. The ability to transition leadership smoothly is as strategically important as any product or market decision. Right now, most UK business would not be successful in this scenario. As a startup, it is time to seriously think about succession planning, whether for your own exit, or your co-founders’.
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