New reports from McKinsey and Strategy& paint a very bleak picture of C-suite succession practices in today’s corporations. According to the first study, a survey of 1,195 executives, nearly half of those who had ascended to top-level positions in their firms said they were unable to align colleagues around the goals they set out in the new role, while more than a third admitted that they had failed to meet those initial objectives. Strategy&, meanwhile, calculated the economic cost of large global companies getting their most important C-suite appointment – CEO – wrong: well over $100 billion.