Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:

Warren Buffett did not wait for succession to become urgent before deciding what Berkshire Hathaway would need without him. For decades, he turned clarity into action, using each decision to make the next one easier when the time came.

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When should a leader begin thinking about succession?

Is it when retirement starts appearing on the horizon? When age makes the question unavoidable? When the board begins asking what happens next? Perhaps when the person who has built the organisation finally decides it is time to leave?

For many leaders, succession belongs to some distant version of the future. There is still time. They are healthy. They are performing. The business needs them. Nobody else is quite ready. There are always more immediate things demanding attention.

Eventually every founder leaves.

Every CEO stops being CEO. Every person occupying a critical role will, for one reason or another, stop occupying it. The date may be uncertain, but the eventuality is not.

Warren Buffett offers an extraordinary example of what can happen when you begin thinking about that reality before it becomes problematic.

On September 18, 2026, at 96 years old, Buffett announced that he was stepping down as Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. He will become Chairman Emeritus and remain a director. His son Howard Buffett will become Chairman, while Greg Abel, who became CEO at the beginning of this year, continues to run the company.

It would be easy to look at this as a succession story that reached its conclusion today – however it did not begin today. It did not begin when Greg Abel was identified as Buffett’s successor. It did not even begin as Buffett approached ‘retirement’ age.

Public evidence of Buffett thinking seriously about what Berkshire would look like without him goes back at least to 1990.

Buffett was 60 then.

In his 1990 shareholder letter, Buffett discussed what would happen if he died. His wife Susan understood and agreed with his thinking about successor management. He explained that Berkshire and its managers should not have their fate determined by his health and wrote simply: “I have planned accordingly.”

Think about that.

Thirty-six years before today’s announcement, the man at the centre of Berkshire was already thinking about what Berkshire needed to become when he was no longer at its centre.

He did not know that Greg Abel would eventually become CEO. He could not have known precisely what Berkshire would look like in 2026. He could not know which people would still be alive, which businesses Berkshire would own or how his own role would evolve.

He did not need to know all of that to begin.

Clarity does not require knowing the entire future. It requires knowing enough about what matters to begin putting the right things in place.

By 1993, another piece was in place.

Howard Buffett joined Berkshire’s board. Warren explained at the time that Berkshire would eventually move from being controlled by an owner-manager to having a significant owner who was not managing the company. Susan Buffett had already joined the board. Howard’s appointment was part of preparing for that eventual governance structure. Buffett’s description was characteristically colourful:

Berkshire was preparing for what would happen if he got “hit by a truck.”

Again, no emergency. No impending retirement announcement. No sudden search for a successor. Just strategy in action.

By 1999, when Buffett was asked whether he intended to groom an heir apparent, his answer revealed how far the thinking had already progressed. Berkshire already had people capable of taking over. Their names were contained in letters held by the directors. Depending on when Buffett and Charlie Munger left the picture, the appropriate person might change, but Buffett said those people were already there and could run Berkshire the next morning.

His plan was clear with built in flexibility

Buffett understood something that often gets lost when we talk about planning. A good plan does not have to lock the future into one answer. It creates enough structure that the organisation knows how it will reach the answer when the time comes.

Then Buffett extended the thinking beyond himself.

In 2001, he explained that approximately every two years he asked Berkshire’s managers to put in writing what should happen if they died that night. Who should succeed them? Were there several candidates? What were their strengths and weaknesses?

He wanted the information before he needed it. I find it to be an interesting relationship with uncertainty. Organisations will always face uncertainty. The danger is allowing questions that could have been examined years earlier to remain untouched until circumstances force an answer.

By 2005, Buffett and the Berkshire board had moved further.

There were three managers considered fully capable of becoming CEO. The board had discussed all three and had unanimously agreed on the person who should succeed Buffett if a replacement were required at that point.

But Buffett also recognised that his own job contained responsibilities that did not necessarily have to remain bundled together. The future CEO could run the businesses while another person handled marketable securities.

He was clarifying the structure of the role itself rather than simply trying to locate another Warren Buffett.

Sometimes the question should not simply be, Who can replace this person? A better question may be, What exactly needs to be replaced?

Which responsibilities belong together? Which depend disproportionately on one individual’s judgement? Which can be distributed? Which capabilities must be present? Which elements of the culture need protection regardless of who occupies the office?

Buffett was progressively reducing the size of the eventual problem.

By 2011, Berkshire’s board had identified a preferred CEO successor and two backup candidates. Todd Combs and Ted Weschler were also being developed to handle investment responsibilities. Buffett wrote that one of the board’s primary responsibilities was ensuring that the next generation of leaders had been identified and was ready to take over.

A year later, he went even further. Buffett told shareholders that succession was the number-one obligation of Berkshire’s board and that the board spent more time on succession than on any other subject that came before it.

Succession planning was important while Buffett was still alive, healthy, active and very much running Berkshire.

The organisation did not wait for succession identification to become a problem and so the plan continued to evolve.

And the plan continued to evolve.

In 2018, Greg Abel became Vice Chairman responsible for Berkshire’s non-insurance businesses and Ajit Jain became Vice Chairman responsible for insurance operations. Both joined the board. Instead of waiting for a future transition and then asking whether potential successors could handle greater responsibility, Berkshire progressively gave them greater responsibility.

Clarity was producing action —>Action was producing evidence and —>Evidence was producing greater clarity.

By 2021, Buffett publicly confirmed what had gradually become clearer inside Berkshire: if something happened to him, Greg Abel would become CEO.

In May 2025, Buffett recommended that Abel formally become CEO, and Berkshire’s board unanimously approved the appointment effective January 1, 2026. Buffett remained Chairman.

Even then, the transition was staged.

Abel could run the business. Buffett could remain Chairman. The organisation could experience the new arrangement rather than attempting to change every important element at once.

Then came September 18, 2026.

Buffett announced that he would become Chairman Emeritus and Howard Buffett would succeed him as Chairman.

What makes today’s announcement particularly revealing is Buffett’s explanation for why the timing is right.

Greg Abel had already been making Berkshire’s important operating decisions. Howard, meanwhile, had spent 33 years as a Berkshire director. Their roles were also distinct. Greg would run the company. Howard would help protect its culture and values.

So when exactly did Warren Buffett make today’s decision?

• Was it today?
• Was it January, when Abel became CEO?
• Was it May 2025, when Buffett recommended him?
• Was it 2021, when Abel was publicly confirmed as successor?
• Was it 2018, when Abel became Vice Chairman?
• Was it 2011, when the board already had a successor and two backups?
• Was it 2005, when three candidates had been evaluated?
• Was it 1999, when directors already held letters naming people capable of taking over?
• Was it 1993, when Howard joined the board?
• Or was it 1990, when Buffett wrote that the fate of Berkshire should not depend upon his health and that he had planned accordingly?

The answer is probably all of them, because important decisions are not always made at a single moment.

A decision made in 1990 clarifies what needs to happen next. The next action creates experience. Experience provides evidence. Candidates are identified. Responsibilities are examined. Roles are separated. People are given larger assignments. Their judgement becomes observable. The board keeps reviewing the question. The plan changes as people and circumstances change.

Each action provides new information for the next decision.

That is what clarity looks like when it is converted into action over time.

Buffett did not predict 2026 in 1990. He progressively removed things that would otherwise have needed to be figured out in 2026.

We sometimes imagine that clarity should give us a complete answer before we move. We want to know exactly what the future will look like, who will be involved, whether the choice will work and what will happen next.

But clarity can work differently.

1. It can tell us what needs attention now.
2. It can help us identify the next useful decision.
3. It can expose a dependency.
4. It can reveal that one role contains too many responsibilities.
5. It can tell us what capability needs to be developed.
6. It can turn an assumption into something that can be tested.

Then action gives us something thinking alone cannot provide: evidence.

That evidence improves the next decision, and clarity begins to compound.

A clear decision today can remove several decisions from tomorrow. A clearly defined role can remove future ambiguity. A clear criterion makes candidates easier to evaluate. A responsibility transferred early provides evidence before the stakes become enormous. A conversation held before it becomes necessary can expose a problem while there is still time to do something about it.

Eventually, something that could have become a crisis becomes a transition.

It is tempting to assume that extraordinary decision-makers simply see answers that other people cannot. Sometimes what we are seeing is the result of something much more replicable. They have already done much of the thinking before the decision becomes urgent.

By the time Buffett reached 96, he did not need to begin asking who should run Berkshire. He did not need to begin determining what his son’s role should be. He did not need to discover whether Greg Abel could carry significant responsibility. He did not need to decide whether his own unusual collection of responsibilities should eventually be divided among several people.

Those questions had been examined, tested, revisited and progressively clarified over decades.

The same principle can be applied more widely

We can wait until a customer relationship deteriorates before examining dependency. We can wait until someone resigns before asking how much knowledge sits inside one person’s head. We can wait until revenue falls before examining whether the business model still works. We can wait until a partnership becomes strained before clarifying expectations. We can wait until circumstances force a decision. Or we can recognize that clarity has value upstream, beginning with what you know, identifying what matters, putting something in place, watching what happens, learning from it and then getting clarity on the next step.

Warren Buffett’s succession story spans more than three decades.

Its lesson is not that he knew all the answers early. It is that he kept refusing to leave important questions untouched simply because their answers were not yet urgently required.

And so today, one of the most consequential leadership transitions in Berkshire Hathaway’s history is happening without any confusion, scramble or uncertainty.

Strategic Reflection Prompt:

What important decision, transition or dependency in your business is predictable, even if it is not yet urgent, and what can you clarify or put in place now so that you are not forced to begin the thinking when the pressure is already on?

About Giselle

Most costly decisions begin with a wrong read of the situation.

I’m Giselle Hudson — The Pre-Fixer. I help leaders see the real problem before they act, in my writing and in my work. I don’t fix; I pre-fix. Most advisers jump to solutions before they’ve found the real problem. I find it first — the part that isn’t fully visible yet. Once we see that clearly, everything else falls into place, and confident, right action can follow.

Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, and the patterns that shape organizations — helping leaders make sense of complexity before they commit significant time and money to the wrong thing.

What’s the one thing about your business that frustrates you most — the thing that, despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to resolve?