Executives and teams

Executive & CEO succession & advisory.

BTS works alongside boards and executive teams to approach CEO succession as a connected, forward-looking process, from planning and readiness to onboarding and ongoing advisory support.

CEO turnover is accelerating.

Average tenure is down to 6–7 years, and a growing share exit within 30–36 months, which means there’s less runway to “grow into” the role. For boards, this changes the jobfrom episodic succession planning to continuous leadership stewardship.
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Offering

Executive onboarding.

Accelerate the transition of new executives with coaching, stakeholder alignment, and a focused plan for early success.

Offering

Candidate selection and assessment.

Go beyond experience to assess how leaders think, adapt, influence, and perform in the moments that matter most.

Offering

New CEO advisory.

Support new CEOs through their transition with trusted advice, strategic guidance, and practical leadership support.

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Strategy shift & crisis management.

Equip senior leaders to navigate strategic change, organizational disruption, and high-pressure leadership moments.

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CEO exit strategy and preparation.

Prepare CEOs and boards for successful leadership transitions through thoughtful planning and succession support.

How we help

Build a future-ready success profile.

Great succession starts with agreeing on what "great" actually looks like. We partner with your board and leadership team to build a success profile grounded in your strategy, culture, and where the business is headed, not where it's been. That profile becomes your foundation: for assessing candidates objectively, developing them with purpose, and selecting with confidence.

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How we help

Assessment & readiness.

The Future-Ready Success Profile Report and Evaluation Framework provide the guide for sourcing your slate of succession candidates. Using the Evaluation Framework as a rubric to score candidates and narrow the field, we evaluate three key categories: Behaviors, Business and Breadth. The result is a short-list of ready-next leaders for the C-level role.

How we help

Candidate selection.

Every leader identified as a potential successor to the CEO/C-Level role will have strengths to leverage, and gaps to close before they are ready for the seat. Moving from strong operating executive to stewardship of the company’s growth, value to shareholders, and culture-bearer is a significant step for even the most experienced leaders. Our deep expertise in preparing C-level leaders and transitioning CEOs into the role provides a playbook for individual development. Utilizing the Bates ExPI™ Assessment –we coach leaders to Engage, Align, Inspire and Motivate.

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How we help

New CEO advisory

During the critical first years, your new CEO/C-Suite executive must build trust, credibility and vision to stabilize the company and drive the strategy. Our expert advisors reduce risk by creating a “safe zone” to talk through approaches, evaluate challenges and options, build their narrative to broad audiences, establish and manage board relationships and dynamics, evaluate and develop their executive team, and establish first-year initiatives, decisions and actions. If the former CEO remains involved as board chair, advisory supports how this relationship is established as effective and productive for the company.