Rick retires in March. Nobody behind him has run a plant.

Ask a mid-market CEO who replaces their best plant manager and you'll usually get one name. Ask who replaces that person, and the room goes silent.

Succession planning sits on every operator's list of things they should be doing. Almost nobody does it. Not because it isn't important, but because the version we were taught doesn't fit the business anymore.

We learned it as a naming exercise. Every key role gets an heir, written down, reviewed once a year. That held up when people stayed 20 years and roles kept their shape.

Then the org chart got flatter, and the layer that came out was middle management. That layer was where a strong supervisor learned to defend a capital request and sit across from an angry customer.

You can't name your way out of that. A named successor is a bet on one person who has to still be here, still want the job, and be ready on a timeline that retirement sets rather than you.

What works is narrower and more useful. Take the 8 or 10 people with the most aptitude for learning, the ones who pick things up fast, and move them across the business. Operations into the finance conversation. Planning into the customer side. Not a rotation program, just real work in a second area.

You get better work out of them now, because someone who understands two functions makes better calls in both. The continuity comes with it.

Then test it. Make a rule that time away is actually time away, no email, no check-ins. Two weeks with the leader gone is the only honest read you'll get on whether the next level can carry it.

And this month, hand one of them something that makes you a little nervous. Most of what you need to know about your bench shows up in how they handle it.

Reply and tell me who you'd hand it to. I read every one.

Thanks for reading,

Sarah