Vescent Succession Management
The leaders you need for the company you are creating.
Vescent helps executives, HR leaders, and Boards make wise leadership decisions that shape the future of their business. Together, we build a succession approach grounded in your strategy and culture, so you know which leaders you’ll need, who has the potential to get there, and where your development investments will make the greatest difference.
Where you are and where you could be
Maybe you're here because...
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Your COO (or another key role) has announced retirement.
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The company is growing and you wonder whether the next generation of leaders can grow with it.
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You have several possible successors, but no one is confident they've been identified on the right things (or even the same things).
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You’re investing heavily in leadership development without enough clarity about whom to invest in or why.
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Your executives and Board have different views about who is ready for what.
Whatever brings you here, the question underneath is the same...
Are we making the leadership decisions today that our business will need tomorrow?
Imagine your executives and Board being able to say...
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We know what leaders our strategy will require. We know who will fit our culture.
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We know who could be ready. We have the evidence to support our talent decisions and a plan to get us there.
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We know where to invest our development dollars, executive mentoring time, and collective energy.
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We can talk candidly about talent while treating people with dignity. We have both the will and the skill for meaningful succession conversations.
And when a leadership change does come, you're ready.
Getting our bearings
Succession decisions are business decisions and people decisions. They deserve both rigor and humanity.
That’s why we use the Vescent Compass when working on succession management. The Compass focuses on four key bearings foresight, evidence, humanity, and stewardship, giving your leaders the clarity and confidence to make consequential talent decisions well.
Unlike off-the-shelf succession processes, we develop a unique solution grounded in your business strategy and sensitive to your culture. All without reducing people to boxes on a grid, relying on gut instinct, or waiting for a critical leadership opening to force the conversation.
Cases in point
When the business changes, the leadership pipeline has to change.
The challenge
A professional services company was expanding its global footprint and shifting from a functional, U.S.-focused business model to cross-functional, cross-cultural teams operating in multiple markets. That strategy would unfold over several years and it required different leadership mindsets and capabilities from those that had built the business to date.
The question wasn’t simply
“Who is ready for the next role?”
It was
“Who has the potential to lead the business we’re becoming?”
The solution
Working with the C-suite, we started with the future business strategy and defined the leadership capabilities it would require. Then we looked at the existing leadership pipeline differently. Because many of the new requirements hadn’t been part of the old paradigm, we weren’t looking only for leaders who had already demonstrated them; we looked for evidence of their capacity to develop them.
That allowed us to distinguish between leaders with strong potential to sustain and grow the existing business and those with the potential to break new ground and innovate. From there, the organization could make more deliberate succession and development decisions, with different investment paths based on the value each leader could create.
KAREN M.
Chief HR Officer
“This work represented a strategic enterprise investment, not simply an HR initiative. It strengthened the connection between our business priorities, leadership requirements, succession plans, and development strategies. It allows us to make more informed and forward-looking talent decisions. Perhaps most valuable, it established an ongoing capability to evolve those decisions as business conditions change, ensuring we can sustain organizational performance while preparing the next generation of leader.”
When strategy and culture seem to collide.
ANDREW C.
VP of Marketing
“Amie was the consultant for my department for years. She provided my department heads and me a range of talent management activities including helping with development plans, coaching executives, facilitating leadership development for high potential directors, completing talent management calibrations and succession reviews. Throughout, Amie was extremely knowledgeable, thorough and professional. I considered Amie a key member of my leadership team.”
The challenge
A senior executive at a mid-sized organization was under pressure to modernize his Marketing & Strategy function. The business needed greater acumen, analytics, and specialized expertise, but the existing team had deep institutional knowledge, strong relationships, and a history of promoting from within. Some leaders advocated replacing the team; others suggested outsourcing much of the work.
The executive saw a more important question:
“How could we build the capabilities that the strategy required while preserving the culture and engagement that still created value?”
The solution
Together, we identified the roles and capabilities most critical to the future strategy, then looked carefully at the performance, potential, aspirations, and learning agility of existing leaders. Rather than treating the choice as “keep the team or replace it,” we determined what could be built internally and what expertise needed to come from outside.
Two senior specialists were ultimately hired externally, while internal leaders with the potential to grow took on expanded roles and helped integrate the newcomers into the organization. Investments in coaching, education, and development helped both new and tenured leaders succeed, while clear performance conversations addressed where change was still needed.
The result was not a choice between strategy or culture. It was a thoughtful talent strategy that used both—bringing in capabilities the business needed while recognizing, developing, and retaining the internal talent that could help carry the organization forward.
Working together: what we'll do
See the Future
Translate strategy and culture into the leadership capabilities your business will need.
Know Your Talent
Create a shared, evidence-based view of performance, potential, aspiration and readiness.
Make Wise Choices
Identify succession candidates, critical roles, bench strength, gaps, and the decisions that follow.
Invest with Intention
Create meaningful development plans and make explicit decisions about where executives will invest time, money, opportunities and attention.
You'll walk away with evidence-based leadership succession to steward the company for generations:
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Clarity on why/how your company culture and strategy matter in making leadership talent decisions
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Differentiation of performance and potential, with clear definitions and evidence
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A calibrated talent matrix/grid specifically crafted to meet your strategy and culture
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Needed critical experiences by role whether promoting from within or hiring from without
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Bench plans with successor candidates and associated considerations for each relevant role
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Tailored development plans for each succession candidate including investment forecasts and commitments by executives in terms of time, money, energy, and other resources
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Guidance on your communication plan