Assessing leaders

Managing your leadership and succession risk

Managing Leadership and Succession Risk.

Organizations across the world are continuing to face significant risks related to succession and business continuity. Future-proofing against these risks and strengthening leadership capacity is key.

Vacancy Risk

The challenge of critical positions being vacant


More than 50% of companies could not immediately name a successor to their CEO, and 39% of employers cited that they have ‘zero’ viable internal candidates (Stanford University)

Readiness Risk

The threat of under-developed successors


More than 40% of individuals on high potential programs may not belong there and companies fail to build an effective leadership pipeline
(Harvard Business Review)

Transition Risk

Poor assimilation of new leaders

1 in 2 leaders cannot engage employees and fail to turn their teams or organizations into high performing machines (Harvard Business Review)

Portfolio Risk

Poor deployment of talent against business goals


46% of leaders fail to meet their business objectives in a new role
(Mercer Talent Enterprise)

Mercer Talent Enterprise's Framework for Succession Planning

Based on research by Mercer Talent Enterprise, assessment of leadership impact is complex and multi-faceted, and requires a multi-modal approach to ensure that the process is objective, robust and future-proofed.

Mercer’s ‘talent to impact’ approach allows for a strategic review of leadership bench-strength and talent risk.

Our proprietary approach to Succession Planning includes independent and objective assessments:

Assessment of Potential: On key behavioral and leadership attributes
Assessment of Readiness: On critical experiences and leadership impact

Representative Tools Used in Assessing Leaders.

Tools may vary based on project purpose as well as client requirements.

Manage Your Succession Risk.​

Manage your succession risk by assessing your leaders and create a robust and objective approach to whether you can ‘build' a pipeline from within or ‘buy' strategic leadership capacity externally.

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