I've sat on both sides of this moment more times than I can count: 

• The board that saw a departure coming from a mile away and had a successor ready before the announcement even went out. 

• The board that got the two-weeks'-notice call and had absolutely nothing in place. 

I've placed the calm, well-prepared successor, and I've been the one scrambling to fill a corner office in ninety days because nobody planned for the alternative. That contrast is exactly why I care so much about getting this right, and why I bring it up with almost every client I work with, whether they've asked for it or not.

Let’s talk about to prep for the best-case scenario in succession planning, and what to do when you’re thrust into less-than-ideal conditions. 

Three steps to a well-planned succession

In the best case scenario, you aren't surprised when your C-suite executive announces their retirement. It's something you've been planning for awhile (maybe even years), and when the day comes, you have a leadership bench to pull from and a succession plan at the ready.

In this instance, here’s what has happened to make the transition easier:

1. You had deep, transparent conversations. Whether the board brought it up or the executive did, you worked to sketch out a timeline and a process. Importantly, you treated the retiring exec with grace and gratitude, which helped ensure their willingness to onboard a successor and set the company up for success.

2. You gave future executives exposure and not just promotions. From cross-functional projects, to ownership of high-visibility initiatives, seats at the table were given long before the title was transferred over. This means that when the announcement comes, it appears to be a thoughtful decision, not a scramble for replacement.

3. You built the plan while the business was thriving, not in crisis. The best succession plans are never written under duress. Instead, they grow with intent and are crafted by a committee that understands the forward motion of the company. 

If that's you, congratulations. It's a genuine rarity in this industry. But if it's not, then don’t worry. There’s still a playbook you can follow to be successful and intentional about the surprise succession plan you’re facing. 

Internal or external?

Before you open a search in earnest, sit with a few basic questions:

• Does it make sense to promote from within, versus bringing in outside talent?

• Are there obvious candidates to consider, even if they come from a different background? 

• Of the candidates you have to consider internally, what are their weak spots? Why might they not make a great fit? 

Even if you're fairly confident the answer is internal, a benchmarking search is worth running. Don't stop at the VP level, either. Use this time to look at your directors and even your managers. One move at the top creates a domino effect through the org, and that ripple is your best opportunity to pressure-test how deep your bench really is.

The bonus to this benchmarking exercise? It almost always turns up at least one external name worth a real look, which can be helpful as you plot out your next steps. It also raises a hard question: How do you evaluate someone fairly when they don't have twenty years of context on your organization?

Giving external candidates a fair shot

External candidates will, of course, never walk in with your institutional knowledge. You inherently know this, but it also can cause hiring committees to quietly stack the deck against them. 

Here's how to keep the process honest and actually see what an outsider brings:

• Weigh promise against proficiency. Decide upfront whether you need someone who can be productive on day one, or someone with the judgment and range to grow into the role over the next 18 months. Scoring external candidates against a “plug-and-play” bar that internal candidates never had to clear isn't a fair comparison.

• Evaluate through an industry-informed lens, not a resume-informed one. Credibility in hospitality doesn't transfer well on paper. A candidate's read on labor models, guest experience economics, or brand standards in a different segment matters more than their title history. (This is also something a hospitality-specific recruiter can help you actually assess.)

• Treat outside experience as a feature, not a gap. The lack of institutional knowledge that feels risky is often what lets an external hire question an internal process nobody has questioned in a decade. Once they have more context into the org, ask what they'd change in the first 90 days, and listen closely to the reasoning.

• Build the knowledge-transfer plan before you need it. Pair the new exec with a structured onboarding period. This should include time with the outgoing leader if possible, standing time with key GMs or regional leads, and documented context on why things are done the way they're done. This is what closes the institutional-knowledge gap fast, instead of leaving them to piece it together for a year.

If you can get the internal-versus-external call right, and evaluate fairly from there, you will have cleared the two biggest hurdles. But I still watch well-intentioned companies trip on the same handful of mistakes after that. 

And this happens often in the final stretch, when the pressure to just fill the seat starts to outweigh the discipline that got them there.

Where succession plans quietly fail

I see the same handful of mistakes across almost every search, regardless of segment:

• Institutional knowledge lives in people's heads, not in documents. When the exit is sudden, that knowledge walks out the door with them.

• Hiring too fast after an unexpected departure. The instinct is to solve the tactical problem. Suddenly, there are a lot of questions about who's running the meetings, who's managing the team next week. Instead of answering these, focus on the strategic question: Who is this person for the next five years, and where do they take the org. Speed in hiring is often just anxiety in disguise.

• Handing over a title without handing over the job. New executives get hired for their judgment and then get boxed into business-as-usual because the organization is too risk-averse to let them actually change anything. Let the new executive lead, not caretake. 

Avoid those three, and you're most of the way to a successful hire.

What a succession-ready organization looks like

When I think about an ideal succession-ready hospitality organization, they have: 

• 12-, 24-, and 36-month succession plans in place for every critical seat, not just the corner office.

• A clear read on top contenders for each executive role, plus the next tier of talent earmarked for future advancement.

• A sharp understanding of where the business and the market are headed, so the profile you're hiring against is built for where you're going, not where you've been.

• Buy-in from the exiting leaders themselves. This only works as a shared, collaborative process that asks for grace and gratitude on both sides.

Let’s build the right succession plan

Most companies have a hard time building the right succession plan without help from a dedicated specialist. Helping companies work through these transitions is what I do each and every day. 

Reach out today to have the first conversation and build a more future-proof organization. 

Agatha Drake is President of One Haus Recruiting, an executive search firm dedicated to the hospitality industry.