Succession planning has a finish line problem. The process ends, formally, at the handover — announcement made, photographs taken, predecessor thanked. Yet the decisions that determine whether the succession actually worked all happen afterwards, in a hundred days nobody planned.

The refusals come first

New chief executives are advised to listen, to tour, to learn. Fine counsel, and incomplete. The defining early choices are refusals: the inherited project not continued, the ritual not attended, the promise not renewed. Each refusal is read by the organisation with rabbinical care. Together they say what the new era will not be — which is the only credible way of saying what it will.

Plan the first no

The useful succession plan therefore runs a hundred days past the handover and names the first no. Boards that agree it in advance spare their new chief the most expensive discovery in the job: that permission granted in the interview does not always survive the first disagreement.