Succession Management Solution / Peopletree Group

Turn successor lists into genuine leadership pipelines using structured talent data, readiness predictions, and the CET model.

Succession management fails when it stops at nomination. We go further, assessing readiness, classifying it on a timeline, and building the plans that close the gaps.

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of critical roles have only one identified successor

of roles lack a ready-now successor in the first cycle

countries where our readiness model has been applied

12 wks

from project kickoff to ExCo-ready succession report

The Problem

Nomination is not succession planning.

Most organisations have a succession list. Few have a succession plan. The difference is readiness: knowing not just who the successors are, but whether they can step in, and when.

Depth is constrained

The average organisation has 1.5 successors per critical role. If one leaves, the bench is gone.

Readiness is uneven

Ready successors leave

Near-ready successors who see no clear pathway become flight risks. The pipeline leaks at the point of highest value.

What you receive at the end of the engagement.

Four deliverables at the end of the 12-week engagement. Three are yours to keep. One stays live.

Succession Reliability Report

The main report your ExCo and Board will see. Covers succession health across the organisation, readiness by role, concentration risk, diversity gaps, and the decisions leadership needs to make.

Individual Successor Reports

A detailed report for each successor showing their scores across behaviour, experience, and technical knowledge, how they compare to what the role requires, their readiness timeline, and a prioritised development plan.

Live Succession Dashboard

A dashboard that stays live after the engagement ends. Shows bench strength, readiness distribution, role exposure, and pipeline depth, and updates automatically with each review cycle.

12-24 Month Roadmap

A practical roadmap to make succession management stick: who owns what, whether to build, buy, borrow, or bridge each role, how to accelerate development for high-priority successors, and how often to review.

Case Study

Building a leadership pipeline in a 28,000-person services company

Facilities services - 28,000 employees - 12 weeks - Tsebo Solutions Group

Tsebo Solutions Group needed an objective view of leadership readiness across their critical roles. They had a succession list but no readiness data.

We assessed key successors across behaviour, experience, and technical knowledge using facilitated review sessions and 360 degree assessment. We then built cohort-level analytics for the ExCo presentation showing readiness by role.

The report identified the critical readiness gaps the ExCo had suspected but never quantified. For the first time, they could see exactly which roles were at risk, which successors were closest to ready, and what needed to happen over the next 18 months to close the gaps.

kickoff to ExCo report

Employees in organisation

Readiness classification applied

Who needs Succession Management?

Organisations with critical roles lacking adequate successor coverage.

Read the Tsebo Case Study

For every successor, we answer three questions: do they have the right behaviours, the right experience, and the right technical knowledge for the target role? We score each one, compare it to what the role actually requires, and calculate how long it would take to close the gaps.

Competencies

How well a successor's behaviours match what the target role demands. We use TalentPrint's multi-rater 360° and forced-ranking, scored against the Talent Genome competency framework.

Experience

Whether a successor has had the right exposure for the target role. We evaluate career history, scope, scale, and cross-functional breadth through facilitated individual review sessions.

Technical Knowledge

Whether a successor has the functional and strategic depth the role requires. We map their current knowledge against the Success Profile for the target role to identify specific gaps.

We call this the CET model. The scores feed into a readiness timeline.

The combined CET score gives you a readiness classification: R1-R4

Based on the gap between where they are and where they need to be, each successor gets a readiness timeline ranging from R1 to R4.

Ready Now

Short-Term

Medium-Term

Long-Term

Our Succession Reliability framework evaluates five areas of your succession ecosystem, from governance and ownership through to transition planning.

What clients ask before they start

How is this different from a standard 360 feedback process?

How many successors and roles can the process accommodate?

It depends on the scope. A focused C-suite review typically covers 10 to 15 roles with 20 to 30 successors, and that fits within the 12-week timeline. If you need to cover multiple leadership layers across the organisation, we phase the work across successive cycles. Most clients start with the executive layer and expand from there.

What data do we need to provide to get started?

How does the readiness model handle governance-critical roles?

We treat them differently. For board-level and governance-critical roles (CEO, CFO, Risk, Compliance, Legal, Internal Audit), we apply stricter readiness thresholds and require deeper bench coverage. If any of these roles has no successor who is ready within a year, we flag that as a specific risk in the ExCo and Board report, along with a recommended response: build the successor internally, buy externally, borrow through an interim, or bridge with a short-term arrangement.

What happens after the initial engagement?

The first engagement gives you a clear baseline. From there, we recommend quarterly reviews and a full annual reassessment. Between cycles, your succession dashboard stays live so you can see bench strength, readiness shifts, and pipeline changes in real time. TalentPrint tracks each successor's development progress against the plans from the initial report. Many clients also choose to expand into our broader Talent Management as a Service offering, which embeds succession into a continuous system alongside assessment, development, and retention.