The Succession view turns trajectory signals into a pipeline view. It’s the answer to “who could we promote, where, and what’s holding back the rest?”.
What this page answers
How many people are ready for promotion right now, and how many are developing toward it? Which departments have a healthy succession bench and which don’t? What persistent gaps are most blocking the pipeline?
What’s on the page
Four headline KPIs
Ready Now — Count of employees promotable today
Developing — Count clearly progressing toward readiness
Not Ready — The rest of the cohort
In Pipeline — Ready Now + Developing combined
Progression readiness
A bar chart showing the count of employees in each readiness level:
Ready Now — Promotable today
Developing — Clearly progressing toward readiness
Not Ready — Not on a clear progression path
Each bar is colour-coded. The width of the Ready Now + Developing bars is your active pipeline; Not Ready is the rest of the cohort.
Pipeline depth by department
A stacked column chart with one column per department, showing the Ready Now / Developing / Not Ready breakdown in each department. Sorted by total pipeline depth.
Use this to spot which departments have a healthy bench and which are over-reliant on a few individuals.
If you only have one department in your filter scope, this chart is hidden.
Pipeline candidates
A filterable table of every employee with trajectory data. Filterable by readiness (Ready Now / Developing / Not Ready) and trajectory (Accelerating / Steady / Declining). Columns:
Name — Clickable for detail
Department
Readiness — Level badge
Trajectory — Direction
Archetype — One of the eight
Evidence — Compass’s narrative of why they’re at this readiness level
Pipeline gaps
A table of the top 15 persistent gaps blocking the Ready Now + Developing cohort. Columns:
Persistent Gap — The gap label
Candidates — How many in the pipeline have this gap
% of Pipeline — That count as a percentage of pipeline candidates
This tells you what’s most often holding promotable people back. Investing in resolving these is a high-leverage move.
Cohort health
A conditional alert card that appears only if:
Any department has zero Ready Now or Developing candidates (named directly), or
A single gap is affecting more than 50% of the pipeline (named directly)
If neither condition is true, the alert is hidden. When it does appear, it’s worth investigating directly — these are real organisational risks.
Where the data comes from
The page is built from the progression-readiness signal in each employee’s trajectory synthesis. Compass produces this from cross-cycle performance, trajectory direction, and the development gaps it’s seeing.
The pipeline gaps table draws on the persistent gaps Compass tracks — the gaps that have shown up across cycles for the people in the pipeline.
The pipeline depth chart filters the same data by department.
How to read it
Pipeline candidates + cohort health is the page’s headline. A healthy firm has Ready Now and Developing candidates in every key department, and no single gap dominating the pipeline.
Department-empty alerts are succession risks. A department with zero pipeline candidates is dependent on hiring or wider-firm rotation for its next leadership move.
Single-gap-over-50% alerts are training investment signals. If “executive presence” is blocking 60% of your pipeline, an executive presence programme has clear ROI.
Pipeline candidates table is the conversation list. Use it as input to talent reviews and promotion discussions.
What about employees who are “Consolidating”?
Compass actually assesses readiness on five levels — Ready Now, Developing, Consolidating (typically people recently promoted or stabilising in a new role), Not Ready, and Insufficient Data (not enough review history to make the call). The Succession view simplifies to three buckets: Consolidating and Insufficient Data employees are counted under Not Ready here. To see and filter the full five states, use the People view.
Tips
Succession is most useful at headcount of 50+. Smaller firms have too few data points to build meaningful department-level views; the People view is more useful for small cohorts.
Pipeline candidates with declining trajectory are a red flag. “Ready Now + Declining” usually means someone was ready but is now slipping — often a flight risk.
Use the gap analysis as training spec. The pipeline gaps table is a roadmap for “what would help the most people progress?”.
Read the Compass AI insights card. It generates an AI-written narrative for the succession picture automatically the first time you open the page — useful for committee prep. The narrative is saved; use the regenerate control on the card to refresh it.