Obviously, this decision was a hard one for me to make. Why talk about this today? It gives us the time to make a strong transition.” It was with these words that Bill Gates, arguably the most influential technology company CEO of his generation, announced his departure from a day-to-day role at Microsoft Corp., the company he co-founded over 30 years ago.

However, Gates’s departure — or rather, Microsoft’s leadership succession plan — had begun years earlier in discussions with the board, and has a two-year transition plan looking forward. It has the hallmarks of a good succession process — board involvement, strong talent and succession processes focused broadly on the executive talent base, and an orderly, staged process for the transfer of power. The results: no drama, no stock gyrations, no downgrades related to lack of confidence. Of course, interested press, public, and investors will follow the story, but this well-run succession process minimizes risk and cost to the business, employees, customers, and investors alike.

Consider the recent sudden death of Frank Lanza, CEO of L-3, whose passing left the company without a successor. The company lost 10 percent of its market value in the month after Lanza announced that he had had surgery for cancer. Upon his death, the Wall Street Journal announced, “At L-3, Founder’s Death Sets Off Speculation on a Sale.” Unhappy shareholders complained about his lack of succession planning. A director stepped in as a nonexecutive chairman, and the CFO became interim CEO while a search committee seeks a new CEO — most likely from the outside. Contrast this with the well-covered McDonald’s CEO story: Despite unexpectedly losing two CEOs in one year, bench strength and strong succession planning allowed this board to handle the challenges gracefully and expeditiously.

How an organization approaches the transfer of power speaks volumes about that organization. Leadership succession has been one of the most popular, and unavoidable, topics since the inception of organizations. Top leadership changes receive particular attention. They signal actions in the future. They create hope or doubt. And the time of transition — before, at, and after — is a time when organizations may be most unstable and vulnerable to external and internal threats alike.

As with all leadership transitions, CEO succession gets a lot of attention. The attention to the CEO succession process has increased, and the process itself has undergone substantial changes. Across top public companies, there is wide variation in practice — from the aging patriarch who refuses to discuss succession, to the New Age career CEO who sets a short-term contract while planning his next CEO role, to directors who demand succession discussions the moment a new CEO steps into his role.

CEOs and boards are working out new approaches by building on established practice but adding more. Across the variety of experience and practice, data suggest that there are some right answers and better practices affecting companies’ organizational continuity and robustness, talent retention, customer retention, and, over the long term, shareholder return. And, across all models, two trends are changing the CEO succession process permanently and affecting how HR approaches succession and talent development.

First, after a long tradition of letting the incumbent CEO guide the process of finding his replacement, directors are taking significant and active interest in the succession process and the decision. According to a recent study jointly conducted by Mercer Delta Consulting and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), most directors indicated that they are taking overall responsibility for planning and decision-making, reflecting an evolving shift away from a CEO-led board concurrence process and toward a board-run CEO-input process. Of the directors surveyed, 39 percent of all boards collaborate on the process with the CEO; some 28 percent have primary responsibility for the process; and 50 percent acknowledged that boards should take the lead in succession planning. Most expect this trend to spread and consolidate.