Why Succession Can Succeed on Paper While Continuity Fails in Practice

By Yemi Oluseun

Succession planning can transfer ownership without sustaining organisational continuity; a continuity rehearsal examines what the business can still do after the handover.

A business can change owners while remaining dependent on the person who sold it. The buyer receives contracts, systems, employees and client relationships, but may discover that important decisions still require the founder’s judgement or intervention.

That is the gap between completing a succession and sustaining organisational continuity. For owners, buyers and boards, the question goes beyond who takes over: can the organisation keep producing important value when the people behind it change? A continuity rehearsal can expose weak points before the deal closes. My doctoral research examines this problem in small UK accounting and advisory firms.

Why Is a Completed Succession Different From Organisational Continuity?

Europe’s business-transfer challenge is receiving growing attention. In June 2026, the European Commission adopted a new Recommendation on business transfers, updating guidance first issued in 1994. It warns that where a transfer fails, jobs, know-how and economic value may be lost.^[1]

Recent articles in The European Business Review examine both the opportunity and the governance of transition. In The Female Business Takeover Opportunity Europe Cannot Afford to Miss^[2], Fernanda Arreola and Cédric Diridollou consider how intergenerational takeovers can combine experience, relationships and emerging leadership. In CEO Tenure, Succession, and the Value of the Firm^[3], Jerry Haar, Siddharth Upadhyay and Vaibhav Mishra emphasise transition governance, decision rights and structured handovers.

Alongside these discussions sits a further operational question: once the transition arrangements end, what can the organisation still accomplish without the outgoing person?

A successor can inherit the title without inheriting the way the work actually gets done.

Robert Grant’s knowledge-based view of the firm explains why this matters. Organisations bring together specialist knowledge held by individuals. Their effectiveness depends on how that knowledge is coordinated and applied, not simply on who possesses it.^[4]

This distinction changes how succession should be assessed. Completing the transfer establishes who owns or leads the business. Sustaining continuity requires evidence that important work can still be performed.

What Can Remain Dependent on the Outgoing Person?

Consider a hypothetical 30-person accounting and advisory firm preparing for sale.

The buyer receives recurring client contracts, experienced staff, documented procedures and a customer relationship management system. The founder has identified a successor and introduced them to major clients. On paper, the business appears ready.

Now imagine the founder takes two weeks away before completion.

Routine work continues. But an unusual client request waits because nobody is sure whether it requires escalation. A senior manager understands the issue but lacks the authority to approve the response. Another colleague knows where the relevant information sits but cannot interpret an earlier decision. A longstanding client insists on speaking to the founder.

Every issue may be resolved in the end, and every deadline met. But each one is solved through delay, workarounds or a call to the founder’s mobile. The founder’s two weeks away have provided an unplanned test of continuity.

The problem is not necessarily concentrated expertise. Small professional-service firms often benefit from specialisation, and duplicating every expert role may be impractical.

Concentration becomes organisational dependence when important work repeatedly returns to one person for rescue.

Research helps explain why formal handovers may fall short. Gabriel Szulanski’s study of knowledge-transfer difficulties identified obstacles including recipients’ limited ability to absorb knowledge, uncertainty about why a practice works and difficult relationships between those transferring and receiving it.^[5]

Wanda Orlikowski’s research on knowing in practice^[6] offers another perspective on organisational knowing: knowing how to do the work is something people keep accomplishing together in practice, rather than something stored intact in a file.

A complete client file therefore matters, but it cannot exercise judgement, establish trust or authorise a decision by itself.

How Can Leaders Test Continuity Before a Business Transfer?

Leaders can test continuity deliberately before completion. I call this a continuity rehearsal.

Select one significant but safely testable activity: a client escalation, specialist decision, month-end process or important relationship handover. Ask the people expected to carry the work after the transition to perform it using the authority, information and support arrangements that will actually remain available.

The outgoing person should be available for appropriate safeguards but should not routinely direct the exercise. The aim is to observe what the organisation can accomplish, where it needs support and whether that support is dependable.

Four practical questions can guide the observation.

The questions guide the rehearsal; the evidence is what happened: what continued, what needed intervention, how much effort it took and whether the alternative arrangement worked.

This also creates a distinction between nominal cover and practised cover. A designated deputy may look reassuring on an organisation chart. A colleague who has already handled an appropriate decision, with access to the necessary expertise and authority, offers more tangible evidence of readiness.

The objective is not to reproduce the outgoing person’s behaviour exactly. Different people may reach equally competent outcomes through different approaches. The test is whether the work still gets done well, even if it is done differently.

What Should Buyers, Boards and Successors Change?

A continuity rehearsal is useful only if it changes the transition plan. Three points in the succession process deserve particular attention.

Before the agreement is finalised, identify the activities that matter most to customers, cash flow, regulatory obligations and daily delivery. Carry out continuity due diligence alongside financial and legal reviews: check whether these activities depend on informal interventions that may disappear after completion.

Contracts may transfer intact even when the organisation’s ability to fulfil them remains fragile. For buyers, that creates a potential exposure to future revenue and enterprise value.

During the handover, create opportunities for successors and colleagues to undertake real work, not merely observe it. Transfer decision authority progressively, establish additional trusted relationships and practise accessing specialist expertise. Where the outgoing person remains involved, define when their input is legitimate support and when it indicates continuing dependence.

After the transition, review operational evidence rather than relying solely on reassuring customer or financial results. Ask which decisions still return to the former owner, where work takes longer, and whether colleagues are absorbing exceptional effort to maintain service.

These distinctions matter increasingly as businesses reorganise and automate. AI can improve access to documents, histories and instructions, but better access does not automatically establish the judgement, authority or relationships needed to use that information effectively.

These concerns point to what I call Continuity Capability: an organisation’s ability to preserve, reproduce and adapt valuable knowledge, judgement, relationships and ways of working when people change. A continuity rehearsal offers one practical way to examine that ability.

The focus shifts from the signed deal to the work the organisation can still perform.

When Has Succession Really Succeeded?

Succession should be judged by more than the smooth transfer of ownership, responsibility or leadership. Its deeper test is whether important work continues through the organisation without routine rescue from the person who has left.

That requires neither eliminating specialisation nor making every employee interchangeable. It requires dependable arrangements through which others can recognise what matters, obtain the support they need, exercise authority and complete the work.

A business can change hands on a given date. Its ability to keep producing value must be demonstrated in practice.

Acknowledgement

The author used AI tools (ChatGPT and Claude) to support literature discovery, article structuring, drafting and language editing. The author reviewed the sources, determined the analysis and approved the final article.

About the Author

Yemi Oluseun is a transformation practitioner, doctoral researcher and Founder of The Change Hive. Her research examines organisational continuity and organisational knowing. She has more than 15 years’ experience leading finance, treasury and operating-model transformations across financial services and international development, including work for a United Nations agency. Her work connects management research with practical organisational change.

References

^[1] European Commission, Recommendation C(2026)3799 to facilitate the transfer of small and medium-sized enterprises, 22 June 2026.

^[2] Fernanda Arreola and Cédric Diridollou, “The Female Business Takeover Opportunity Europe Cannot Afford to Miss”, The European Business Review, 2 October 2026.

^[3] Jerry Haar, Siddharth Upadhyay and Vaibhav Mishra, “CEO Tenure, Succession, and the Value of the Firm”, The European Business Review, 11 May 2026.

^[4] Robert M. Grant, “Toward a Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm”, Strategic Management Journal 17(S2) (1996): 109–122; doi:10.1002/smj.4250171110.

^[5] Gabriel Szulanski, “Exploring Internal Stickiness: Impediments to the Transfer of Best Practice Within the Firm”, Strategic Management Journal 17(S2) (1996): 27–43; doi:10.1002/smj.4250171105.

^[6] Wanda J. Orlikowski, “Knowing in Practice: Enacting a Collective Capability in Distributed Organizing”, Organization Science 13(3) (2002): 249–273; doi:10.1287/orsc.13.3.249.2776.