Leadership Succession & Development

Align leadership strategy with your organization’s future by identifying, developing, and preparing the leaders needed to guide the next chapter of performance and growth.

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Executive Succession & Leadership Strategy Can’t Be Reactive

Health systems today face unprecedented leadership complexity. CEO transitions, talent shortages, evolving governance expectations, and performance pressures demand more than replacement planning.

Yet many organizations treat succession as a one-time event rather than an integrated strategy—leaving leadership depth, performance alignment, and incentive design disconnected from enterprise goals.

When succession, development, and compensation operate in silos, continuity and performance suffer.

Succession Challenges

Identifying the Right Candidate

Managing Internal Politics

Maintaining Continuity

Retaining Top Talent

Preparing Incoming Leaders to Succeed

Partnering with SullivanCotter

Creating a Smooth Transition

SullivanCotter helps organizations build and sustain a strong pipeline of leadership talent for their most critical roles by identifying, assessing, and developing high-potential leaders.

Through objective leadership assessments, succession planning, and targeted development strategies, we provide evidence-based insight to strengthen executive performance, improve leadership readiness, and align leadership capabilities with the organization’s mission, strategy, and culture—ensuring continuity and long-term success.

An Integrated Approach to Executive Workforce Strategy

SullivanCotter integrates executive compensation advisory, leadership assessment, and succession planning into one cohesive strategy. By aligning rewards, readiness, and performance expectations, we help organizations:

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Strengthen executive team effectiveness

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Build leadership pipelines for critical roles

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Align incentives with strategy and governance

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Accelerate adoption during transformation

How We Help

Optimize Team Effectiveness

Strengthen leadership team alignment, decision-making, and collaboration to help executives operate more effectively and deliver on strategic priorities.

Corporate Governance

Partner with boards and executive leadership to design sound governance structures, develop strong board capability, and enhance long-term effectiveness—supporting leadership continuity, succession oversight, and organizational performance.

Compensation Design & Total Rewards

Design competitive, performance-aligned compensation and rewards programs that attract, retain, and motivate leaders while supporting organizational strategy and long-term sustainability.

Insight Spotlight

Defining Leadership for the Future of Health Care

Health systems are navigating workforce pressures, regulatory complexity, and rapid strategic change. In this environment, leadership decisions must be grounded in more than intuition. High-performing organizations are strengthening leadership strategy through data, behavioral science, and deeper insight into the dynamics of health care leadership.

While competency models provide useful structure, leading organizations go further—using data-driven insight to assess leaders, develop future executives, and align leadership performance with enterprise strategy. Our HCPI research highlights the leadership behaviors and capabilities shaping the future of health care organizations.

Explore the Research
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Surveys to Inform Succession Success

SullivanCotter’s survey intelligence helps organizations benchmark workforce practices and performance drivers—supporting strategic decisions around operating models, talent investments, and organizational effectiveness.

Health Care Management and Executive Compensation Survey

Provides critical benchmarking data on executive and management compensation trends and pay practices. For nearly 35 years, this survey has been and continues to be the largest of its kind for health care organizations nationwide.

Medical Group Executive
Compensation Survey

Provides vital source of benchmarking data on key executive positions in both independent medical groups and those owned by health systems.

Benefits Practices in Health Care Organizations Survey

Uniquely focused on health care organizations, this survey helps address challenges in executive, physician, and employee benefits programs, including optimizing offerings, implementing retirement plans for evolving roles, and keeping pace with trends in paid time off, severance, and disability programs.

Pulse on the Industry


Stay current with SullivanCotter research and thought leadership on performance analytics, leadership incentives, workforce strategy, and organizational performance.

Other Capabilities to Explore

Architecting the way forward for leadership is just the beginning of how SullivanCotter supports health care organizations. Discover related services we provide to help drive workforce and organizational performance.

Let’s Architect Your Solution

Ready to build a stronger leadership bench and prepare future leaders for the challenges ahead? SullivanCotter helps organizations develop succession strategies that support leadership continuity and sustained organizational performance.

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