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Six steps to shaping your board’s future success and facilitating a calm transition.
Ensuring your board’s succession outcome is future-proof and orderly rather than chaotic, requires ensuring you have a good plan to start with. Australian governance leaders are calling on boards to shift succession from static plans to active systems. Succession planning should be “always on” and to build an effective pipeline you need foresight and groundwork.
With solid preparation in place, particularly should there be an unexpected departure, your organisation can have confidence in the board and stakeholders can be reassured the process will proceed as smoothly as possible.
Michael Rosmarin GAICD, managing partner at Johnson Partners (Board, Succession & Leadership Advisory skills), says experience and cultural fit are two essentials boards need to be considering – and the readier you are, the better the process will be when the time comes for succession.
Preparation should start some time before a director leaves the board, particularly when it involves the chair. “For anyone identified as a potential chair, you would ideally want them to be on the board for a number of months before transitioning into the chair role,” he says. “You also don’t want too many maximum terms coming to an end at the same time, nor too many directors being up for re-election simultaneously.”
Identify and build talent pool
Mapping those timings and planning for succession is an essential part of the pipeline development. “You can build a pool of potential talent through providing the board with exposure to potential candidates long before you might need them,” says Rosmarin. He adds that mentoring or inviting people to speak to the board about their area of expertise or advising a committee can be a way of introducing them to the board. “This exposure gives you an opportunity to see if they might, in the future, be a good fit should the board feel their skills are what’s required when a vacancy arises,” he says. “This does not negate the formal selection process the board would undertake when there is a vacancy. However, it can help to reduce the risk, as well as the time the director would need to get up to speed on the company.”
Align with strategy
Updating the board skills matrix annually is an important step in ensuring the combined strengths and gaps of directors are identified and the composition of the board remains current. This should include technical, functional, sector and geographic expertise and experience.
“Does the candidate have the skills and experience the board needs to govern and guide the organisation to achieve the company’s mission and strategy?” asks Rosmarin.
Often, the nominations committee will lead and facilitate this process with regular updates to, and appropriately engaging with, the board.
“Once you’ve identified any gaps, even though there may not be a vacancy, proactive boards may engage a search firm to conduct a market-mapping exercise to identify potential candidates, even in the absence of an immediate vacancy,” says Rosmarin. “This builds a forward-looking view of the available talent pool and creates a curated pipeline of candidates aligned to future needs. Some boards then take this to the next stage and meet these candidates, so when a vacancy does come up, the search process may take less time as the groundwork has already been laid.”
Pipeline blueprint: A guide
Phases 1–5 should run continuously in the background, while phase 6 activates on demand. The cycle returns to phase 1 after every appointment to set the new baseline for the competency map.
1. Competency mapping
→ Timing: Ongoing, with an annual refresh.
This is where your board needs to define what skills and experience the board needs, now and in three to five years.
→ Start with: Skills matrix, board charter, strategic plan alignment, director self-assessment.
→ Tools: Use current director profiles, strategic priorities and regulatory requirements.
2. Skills and diversity gap analysis
→ Timing: Annual and after any departure.
Identify what’s missing. Does the board need technical skills, lived experience, cognitive diversity or tenure spread? These are just some of the considerations and will be different depending on each board.
→ Start with: Gap heatmap, diversity dimensions, tenure and retirement forecasts.
→ Tools: Map your board composition data with director retirements and term expiry dates clearly outlined.
3. Mitigating groupthink
→ Timing: Built into gap analysis.
Actively target independent thinkers, sector outsiders and perspectives not yet on the board.
→ Start with: Cognitive diversity audit, independence check, sector and geography spread.
→ Tools: Board evaluation results, independence declarations, sector representation map.
4. High-potential longlist
→ Timing: Rolling, review every six months.
Build a list of internal and external candidates mapped to future gaps. Use the networks of current directors to help identify potential candidates. Get to know people before you need them.
→ Start with: Candidate longlist, readiness rating, gap-to-candidate mapping.
→ Tools: Internal talent profiles, external search brief, readiness timeline that details ready now, in 1-2 years, and in 3-5 years.
5. Mentorship and stretch opportunities
→ Timing: Active with high-potential candidates.
Be proactive. Accelerate readiness through mentoring, education opportunities, observerships, committee exposure and sponsorship. Create development milestones for current directors to achieve and potential directors to attain.
→ Start with: Observer program, sponsor pairings, development milestones.
→ Tools: Development plans, committee assignment records, sponsor/mentee pairings, milestone check-ins, director self appraisals, external board and director effectiveness appraisal, continuous learning opportunities for the board as a whole and for individual directors.
6. Active succession and appointment
→ Timing: Event-driven/on-demand.
When there’s a departure, term expiry or new seat, have your shortlisted candidates ready to move through a formal process.
→ Start with: Shortlist, recruiters on speed dial, interview and references, board discussion, induction plan ready to activate, inductee succession plan.
→ Tools: Vacancy brief details, role specification drawn from your shortlist assessments, competency map, conflicts of interests register, induction checklist.
This article first appeared as 'Cultivate your Pipeline' in the Aug/Sep 2026 Issue of Company Director Magazine.
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