The owner had a goal of transitioning the company to his oldest son over the next several years and retiring somewhere warm. After his son worked for four years in a corporate setting, his company hired him to work for the CFO. At about 9 months in, his CFO unexpectedly concluded that the son did not have what it takes to be the future leader. While the owner wanted to trust the CFO, he decided to conduct a formal 3rd -party evaluation which confirmed that his son did, in fact, have the profile of a future leader. It also became evident that other employees were missing plans to learn new skills and being looked over for advancement. The bottleneck resulted from outdated budgeting practices that ignored employee development and underutilized the role of human resources. I introduced a new organizational structure and designed a leadership development initiative that solved for both challenges.