🔵 CEO Succession: the glass ceiling is procedural, not cultural

In large corporations, the glass ceiling is no longer a metaphor. It is a strategic mechanism activated long before successions, far from the spotlight.

When a CEO approaches the exit, the real decision is not made in the nomination committee. It takes place 18 to 24 months earlier, in the discreet framing of the “expected profile” orchestrated by the board chair, two or three pivotal directors, an investment bank, and sometimes an international search firm. At that stage, technical criteria become the invisible weapon of the status quo:

• “Mandatory US market exposure,”

• “Proven experience managing a full crisis cycle,”

• “Track record running multi-billion P&Ls.”

Presented as rational, these filters in reality narrow the space of choice and often, silently, sideline the most solid female trajectories.

The process follows a logic of reassurance: minimizing perceived risk and replicating a previously validated model. Outstanding women do exist, but their career paths fall outside the implicit template. The result: they are mentioned at the start… and erased before the final shortlist.

This is not a pipeline issue. It is a lock of coalitions and narratives. Internal coalitions fear that a strong female leader would redistribute established loyalties. The “market narrative” is calibrated to reassure investors and analysts — at the expense of managerial innovation.

Initiatives such as Next Women 40 play a useful role: broadening the frame of reference, creating collective memory, and offering a rational alibi for those willing to move. But without addressing the system’s core — the initial definition of criteria, the mapping of off-stage influencers, and the preparation of candidates to present an irrefutable strategic alibi (90-day plan, coalition of external supporters, neutralized references) — the effect remains limited.

The real glass ceiling is not cultural, it is procedural. Until these invisible mechanisms are shifted, the best will remain invisible.

mapping coalitions, anticipating resistances and behaviors, preparing reassurance, and creating the conditions for the most remarkable not to be erased — but to be chosen.

Because in high-level governance, the difference between being mentioned and being appointed never plays out in the open.

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