Saturday, September 5th, 2026
Public successions get covered as contests between people, because people are the visible part. The reliable predictor is duller: whether anyone ever wrote down how the handover was supposed to work.
Shareholder meetings were a scheduling exercise for decades. Rising opposition on pay, board composition and auditor tenure has made the outcome uncertain enough to require actual campaigning.
Boards have become disciplined about naming a successor for the chief executive. Two levels down, where most operating knowledge actually sits, the same companies have no plan and frequently no list.
A quarterly ritual built around a hundred-page deck produces informed directors and almost no useful challenge. The format is the problem, and it is entirely within the board's power to change.
Boards once counted press mentions. Now they ask what AI assistants, search engines and diligence teams actually surface when an executive's name is entered.
Board seats at small and mid-sized companies were long treated as honors. Rising liability, activist attention and operational complexity are turning them back into jobs.