Succession Planning in an Age of Geopolitical Fracture

Geopolitical fracture is rewriting the rules of succession planning, and most boards have not caught up.

The Oliver Wyman Forum and NYSE CEO Survey 2025 found that nearly nine in ten CEOs now cite geopolitics, trade policies, tariffs, and industrial policy as a risk to their business, up 20 percentage points from the previous year. That jump, the largest of any risk factor in the survey, places geopolitical disruption at the centre of the leadership agenda. And yet, succession planning in most organisations still treats geopolitics as somebody else’s problem: a background condition to be monitored rather than a defining variable in who should lead next.

The consequences of this disconnect are becoming visible across every major economic area. In late December 2025, China sanctioned 20 US defence companies and 10 senior executives, barring those individuals from entering mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. That same month, the US expanded its own travel ban to 39 countries. Earlier in 2025, the EU sanctioned two Chinese banks for helping Russia circumvent European restrictions, setting a precedent that financial institutions anywhere can be designated if they frustrate EU policy. India’s Press Note 3 requires government approval for any investment by entities from countries sharing a land border, a rule that has primarily affected Chinese investors but creates precedent for broader application. These are not isolated incidents from one country, they are parallel actions by competing powers, each one narrowing the space in which global executives can operate.

Boards Are Paying Attention. The Question Is Whether They’re Paying Attention to the Right Things

The good news is that boards are waking up to geopolitical risk faster than at any point in recent memory. The EY-Parthenon Geostrategy in Practice survey found that the proportion of boards taking regular action across geostrategy areas nearly tripled between 2021 and 2025, rising from 26% to 76%. That is a remarkable acceleration. But most of this activity is focused on assessing the impact of political risk on existing strategy (84% of boards) and receiving political risk briefings from management (82%). In other words, boards are getting better at understanding what geopolitical risk means for today’s business. Far fewer are asking what it means for tomorrow’s leadership.

That distinction matters because succession planning is, by definition, a forward-looking exercise. The same Oliver Wyman Forum survey found that 84% of CEOs are taking new actions to address geopolitical risks. It also found that 53% of boards are now more involved in executive performance and succession, and 69% of CEOs are intensifying succession planning efforts. These two findings belong together: CEOs are responding to geopolitical disruption in real time, and boards are simultaneously tightening their grip on succession. The opportunity, which relatively few organisations have yet seized, is to connect these two impulses by embedding geopolitical readiness into the criteria by which successors are identified and developed.

The Passport as an Operating Constraint

Here is an aspect of succession that almost nobody is discussing openly: your next CEO’s citizenship now carries operational consequences. China’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law allows it to ban executives of sanctioned companies from entering mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau, and to cancel existing work or residency permits. US Department of State guidance on its travel ban instructs consular officers that National Interest Exceptions should be “used rarely” and that routine business travel does not qualify. The EU, through its 18th sanctions package, has expanded its sanctions designation criteria to reach third-country financial institutions with no European presence whatsoever.

The cumulative effect of these overlapping regimes is that an executive’s ability to physically enter your most important markets is no longer something boards can take for granted. For any role that involves cross-border responsibilities, a question that would have seemed absurd a decade ago now demands a serious answer: can this person operate in the jurisdictions that matter most to our business? And if diplomatic relations deteriorate further, will that still be true in three years?

The constructive response is not to narrow the candidate pool by nationality. That would be both discriminatory and counterproductive. It is to build what might be called “jurisdictional depth” across the leadership bench: a deliberate spread of executives who, between them, can operate credibly across the areas that matter most to the business. This is not about hedging against a single country’s policies. It is about building a leadership team that can function regardless of which direction the fractures run.

Planning for Two Worlds, Not One

Traditional succession planning identifies a single successor profile based on the company’s current strategy and trajectory. That approach worked when the external environment was relatively stable. It becomes dangerous when that trajectory can be dramatically altered by forces no CEO can predict or prevent.

McKinsey’s Geopolitics Practice has framed the choice usefully. The future may be a “diversified world” in which geopolitical frictions are limited to certain goods and technologies while investment still flows across borders, or a “fragmented world” in which trade blocs harden and companies are forced to choose sides. The same research found that industrial policy actions grew by nearly 390% between 2017 and 2024, primarily in defence, semiconductors, and advanced equipment. That acceleration makes the fragmented scenario increasingly plausible, but it does not make the diversified scenario impossible. The uncertainty itself is the point.

Each of these worlds demands a very different kind of leader. In the diversified scenario, the premium is on someone who can work across a patchwork of regulatory environments and seize openings in new trade corridors as they emerge. In the fragmented scenario, an organisation needs a leader who can make painful portfolio decisions quickly: winding down operations in contested markets, restructuring supply chains under political pressure, and building regional self-sufficiency where global integration is no longer viable. Boards that build development pathways testing candidates against both scenarios will have a considerable edge over those still preparing successors for a single projected future.

When Emergency Succession Becomes Geopolitical

Most emergency succession plans, where they exist, are designed for a narrow set of triggers: the CEO suffers a health crisis, dies unexpectedly, or resigns without warning. These are the right scenarios to plan for, but they are no longer the only plausible emergencies. What happens when your CEO is denied entry to a market that represents a third of your revenue? What happens when countersanctions from a foreign government cancel their residency permit in a region where you operate a manufacturing hub? What happens when a diplomatic dispute between two nations suddenly makes your CFO’s dual nationality a regulatory liability?

These scenarios are no longer hypothetical. A Nasdaq Center for Board Excellence webinar observed in mid-2025 that companies are increasingly expected to serve as front-line enforcers of export controls and sanctions, with compliance obligations now extending even to firms producing lower-tier commercial products. The personal compliance exposure of senior executives in this environment is real and growing, and it varies depending on their nationality, residency, and personal investment history. Emergency succession documents should include geopolitical scenarios alongside medical ones, identifying who can step in if the current leader is unable to operate freely across the organisation’s most exposed regions.

The Board’s Own Readiness

Even when boards recognise the need for geopolitically literate successors, they face an internal challenge: their own composition may not equip them to identify what geopolitical readiness looks like. Research published by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance found that directors aged 66 to 70 now represent 26% of S&P 500 boards, up from 21% five years ago, while the share of directors under 55 has stagnated. This trend toward experience and institutional continuity is understandable during volatile times, but it carries a risk: directors whose careers were formed during an era of relatively stable globalisation may unconsciously default to a successor profile that mirrors their own worldview.

As Directors & Boards noted in late 2025, boards should be widening their search to include directors with backgrounds in government, diplomacy, or regulatory affairs. The publication argued that “directors do not need to be experts in foreign policy, but they do need the sensitivity to recognise when global developments might quietly but profoundly alter the company’s direction.” The same logic applies to the succession pipeline itself. If the people selecting the next CEO do not understand how geopolitical risk operates, they are unlikely to test for it in candidates.

A parallel Harvard Law School Forum analysis of geopolitical risk governance warned that the international system may be entering a “geopolitical risk supercycle” after decades of relative peace, and that “there still remains little consensus with regard to how to approach such risks, given the very different geopolitical experiences and exposures of different companies.” That absence of consensus is itself a reason for boards that move early to build an edge. The organisations that develop a clear framework for geopolitical succession readiness will be operating with a level of foresight that most of their peers have not yet attempted.

The Opportunity in the Disruption

It would be easy to read all of this as a reason for pessimism. It is, in fact, a reason for ambition. A WTW pulse survey this year found that 65% of HR leaders cite the ability to lead through ambiguity as their biggest succession concern. The specific ambiguities of this era, the possibility that your second-largest market becomes sanctioned territory, that your friendshored supply chain loses its preferential status when alliances realign, that your data governance framework becomes illegal overnight in a new jurisdiction, can be named, planned for, and turned into development opportunities for high-potential leaders.

Consider what this means in practice. A rising CFO who spends twelve months managing government relations in a contested market returns with an understanding of political risk that no MBA programme can provide. A regional president who has successfully wound down operations under sanctions pressure, then rebuilt in a new jurisdiction, has been tested in ways that a decade of steady-state leadership never allows. These are the kinds of experiences that produce executives who can lead through real uncertainty. Boards that deliberately design these development pathways are not just protecting against risk, they are building leadership teams with a calibre of geopolitical awareness that most organisations simply lack.

Succession as Statecraft

Who you place at the top of your organisation now sends signals far beyond the boardroom: to governments, regulators, sovereign wealth funds, and the political actors whose decisions increasingly determine where your company can operate. The EY-Parthenon Geostrategy in Practice survey found that 94% of companies have increased their time and resources on geostrategy in the past 24 months, and that over 60% have already suffered negative impacts to their operations, supply chains, reputation, or compliance from geopolitical events. The question is no longer whether geopolitics will affect your next leadership transition, it is whether your board will be ready for it.

The era of the one-size-fits-all global CEO is ending. What replaces it will be shaped by the boards that see this moment for what it is: not a constraint on their options, but a prompt to build leadership teams of a depth and geopolitical intelligence that the previous era never demanded. Those that move first will set the standard for the next generation of corporate leadership worldwide.

Stanton Chase helps organisations across six continents identify and develop leaders equipped for the complexities of a fractured global order. With more than 70 offices across 45 countries, our consultants bring local market fluency and global perspective to every leadership engagement.

About the Authors

Eleri Dodsworth, Partner at Stanton Chase London and EMEA Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, specialises in executive search, succession planning, and executive assessment, working with chairs and leadership teams to identify, benchmark, and appoint senior leaders whose diverse capabilities, experience, and perspectives produce organisational impact.

Jan Duniec, Partner at Stanton Chase Warsaw, serves as Stanton Chase’s Global Industrial Sector Leader. Jan specializes in consulting for the industrial, technology, consumer products and services, and SCC/BPO business sectors. He brings to the table a wealth of international experience in business and plant management, gained through his work in the UK, France, and Poland.