Succeedin at succession: Do this, don't do that: why do so many boards blow it on CEO succession, and what can they do to improve their track records? Here is a board leader who has some recommended actions.

• Author: Tichy, Noel M.
• Position: CEO SUCCESSION

My good friend Bob Knowling, who served on the board of Hewlett-Packard after Carly Fiorina was hired and left after she was fired, has been serving on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards for nearly 30 years, ever since he agreed to become a director of his local Blue Cross and Blue Shield affiliate in Indiana, after which he joined the board of Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary Shell Oil Exploration. He currently serves on the boards of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, the industrial conglomerate Roper Industries, and network solutions provider Ariba. As CEO of high-flying telecom company Covad, Bob helped build its board and ultimately clashed on a number of critical strategy issues with his directors, leading finally to his resignation. He is currently involved with a wide range of high-profile consultancies and assignments, on some of which he works with me and my team. Recently, I sat down with Knowling to learn more of what, in his opinion, makes boards succeed or fail at their assigned mission of selecting leaders. Is it truly a mission impossible?

Don't No. 1: Don't Not Have a Name in the Envelope

The most awkward predicament any board can get itself into, which occurs just the same with alarming frequency, lately accelerated by the rise of activist investors and ratcheting pressures on boards and CEOs to deliver better performance, is for a sitting CEO to abruptly step down and leave the board with no name to pull out of the envelope. Time and again this occurs, and time and again, cooler and more rational minds are left to scratch their heads and wonder: What on earth were they thinking? An emergency succession plan is the corporate equivalent of carrying a first aid kit and a spare tire in the trunk of your car. It is commonsense business continuity planning, but by one account, up to 40 percent of directors surveyed admitted that they were "not prepared for an emergency succession in the event of a sudden, unexpected, or unplanned departure of their company's leader."

L To which my response is: come on, you have got to be kidding. This is the source of the dreaded interregnum, and what gets boards of directors laughed at on business talk shows. The solution to this problem is really quite simple: As the Boy Scout motto puts it, "Be Prepared!"

Don't No. 2: Don't Have a SPOTS Paper Plan

The most frequent result of having a strong-willed CEO and a reticent board is not that the issue of succession planning is formally...