Executive Onboarding and Beyond: Leading in the Shadow of a Predecessor
Consider:
“When a predecessor stays on, executive onboarding and beyond is less about choosing continuity or change, and more about how deliberately a new CEO manages the space between the two.”
On January 1 of this year, Greg Abel succeeded Warren Buffett as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, with Buffett remaining on as Chairman. While this structure preserves continuity and institutional memory, research suggests it also creates strategic constraints for incoming CEOs.
A predecessor who stays on as chair can be a significant resource to a successor, serving as a mentor, network connector, and reference for the organization’s past throughout executive onboarding and beyond. At the same time, that continued presence can limit a successor’s freedom to act, particularly when it comes to making strategic changes.
This tension sits at the center of what research tells us about successions like Berkshire’s.
In a 2011 study, Timothy Quigley and Donald Hambrick examined five-year periods following 181 CEO succession events across public high-technology firms with more than $100 million in revenue. They found that predecessor CEOs remained in the chair role 51% of the time.
Across these events, a consistent pattern emerged. When predecessor CEOs stayed on as chair, successor CEOs made fewer strategic changes in resource reallocation, divestitures, and top management team departures. Company performance, in turn, stayed roughly the same as it had been prior to the succession.
By contrast, once the predecessor CEO departed the chair role, successor CEOs made more strategic changes in resource reallocation, divestitures, top management team composition, and company performance changed.
In other words, successor CEOs appear to be constrained in their strategic actions when their predecessors remain as chair, which shows up in company performance.
These dynamics help explain what’s happening.
In their 2004 Harvard Business Review article, Seven Surprises for New CEOs, Michael Porter, Jay Lorsch, and Nitin Nohria describe the dynamic that unfolds between a new CEO and the board:
“The [new] CEO has to spend time letting members [of the board] get to know them and develop confidence in their ability and judgment. Should a new CEO’s predecessor remain involved, in the chairman’s seat or on the board, the challenge becomes even greater. The former CEO brings board relationships and a legacy of decisions that the new CEO may wish to reconsider. All of this creates awkwardness in the boardroom and makes it difficult for the successor to work with the board.”
The constraint is not simply structural, it is relational; authority overlaps, judgments are implicitly compared, and decisions carry the weight of legacy.
In 1995, Thomas Gilmore and Don Ronchi explored what happens when new leaders are compared to their predecessors; a phenomenon they described as standing in the “shadow” of the predecessor. They defined the shadow metaphor as the “process whereby memories of a former leader play a dominant role in shaping current behavior in the organization.” While these shadows can fade as organizations develop more direct experience with a new leader, they can also linger.
Berkshire Hathaway is, of course, a unique case of executive onboarding with the predecessor as chair. With a market capitalization exceeding $1 trillion, the stakes are unusually high, and Warren Buffett is not just a former CEO but a singular figure in American business. If anything, this makes Berkshire less of an exception and more of an extreme example of the dynamics the research describes. Indeed, Buffett casts a long shadow.
For these reasons, as Berkshire’s succession continues, it will be important for Greg Abel to actively manage these dynamics. The research suggests that success in these situations does not come from trying to escape the shadow quickly, but from working within it deliberately.
In my work with leaders transitioning into new high-stakes roles, I draw on research. I particularly resonate with a recent review paper by Xuting Jiang and colleagues (2025) that highlights three actions new CEOs can take when their predecessor remains involved:
Recognize predecessor contributions rather than engage in self-promotion, which helps reduce the risk of early dismissal and signals respect for the organization’s past.
Host a facilitated exchange of information and feedback with the top team, often with the support of HR or an external consultant, to build strong working relationships.
Generate a cascade of support across the leadership team, recognizing that when team members see their peers supporting the new CEO, resistance to that leader is less likely.
Taken together, when a predecessor stays on, executive onboarding and beyond is less about choosing continuity or change, and more about how deliberately a new CEO manages the space between the two. A predecessor’s continued presence can provide stability and legitimacy, but it also narrows the successor’s room to act.
For CEOs stepping into roles where a predecessor remains close, the challenge is not to erase the past, but to honor it in ways that gradually create the freedom to shape what comes next.
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