Board Leadership Succession Planning

Explore findings from NACD’s 2024 Private Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey related to board leadership succession planning. The data was gathered from directors who serve on the boards of privately held companies. Additional survey data on this topic is provided in this Data Pack.

Access the full 2024 survey here.

Key Insights

While the board has a prominent role in the CEO selection and succession process, the board has another crucial task that garners less attention: selecting its own leaders. Survey data suggest that most private company boards do not have a systematic approach to plan for their next board chair, lead independent director, and committee chairs. For example, only 42 percent of respondents discussed short-term board and committee leadership succession planning in the past year and even fewer (37%) considered longer term plans. See the associated Data Pack for additional data on practices related to board and committee leadership succession.

Succession planning for these roles may not be viewed as critical. Most respondents indicated that there are current directors that can effectively fulfill leadership roles if any of the board or committee chairs left the board tomorrow. Most respondents indicate that their board has dedicated a sufficient amount of time to succession planning for these roles.