A U.S. giant just collapsed spectacularly. What that teaches employers about succession planning

The risk doesn’t only show up when stars walk out. Sometimes it runs the other way. In November 2023, after OpenAI’s board fired chief executive Sam Altman, about 700 of the company’s roughly 770 employees signed a letter threatening to quit unless he came back. He was reinstated within days. When one person anchors a workforce’s confidence, removing them can be as destabilizing as losing them.

In 2025, just 22% of HR leaders said their organization had a formal succession plan, according to SHRM. The figure was 16% at smaller organizations and 44% at extra-large ones. In the Mercer and Marsh US People Risk 2024 report, 34% of employers said they were concerned about significant dependencies on key people and inadequate succession planning. And 69% of directors surveyed by the Diligent Institute said sudden departures of CEOs or other critical talent have a significant impact on their organization, HRD reported.

“People are an organization’s most important asset, but they can also expose organizations to risk without the right culture, policies, and training,” Susan Potter, Mercer’s U.S. and Canada region president, said when the report came out.

Four warning signs

A handful of people carry the business. Try a blunt exercise. If your two or three most valuable people resigned in the same quarter, what would go with them? Client relationships, a big slice of revenue, the only real understanding of a critical system? If the honest answer is “a lot,” that is key-person risk, whatever the org chart says.

The star decides who else gets to grow. Bloomberg Law has reported that Aiello resisted investing in new practice areas, that this caused friction among Weil’s leaders, and that they were unwilling to part ways with their biggest business generator. When one person’s blessing is needed before anyone else can build something, the pipeline of future leaders narrows. Watch for high performers who keep clients to themselves, slow-walk promotions or quietly kill new ideas.