Founder
Ken Ohyama
Helping organizations preserve the hard-won judgment that makes critical leadership roles work.
About the work
Skagway Succession is a U.S. executive-succession advisory that captures and transfers the tacit judgment of critical leaders. Ken founded the firm around a simple conviction: a critical transition is not only a change of title. It is a transfer of judgment, relationships, and context that deserves to be studied with care.
His writing focuses on executive succession, founder dependency, key-person risk, tacit knowledge transfer, and evidence of successor readiness. It is intended for CEOs, boards, and leaders responsible for continuity through consequential change.
Methodology origin
Skagway’s approach begins with real decisions rather than generic competency lists. It surfaces the cues, exceptions, relationships, and reasoning that experienced leaders use, then turns that insight into deliberate successor practice and readiness evidence when a successor is named.
The approach draws from ideas in Cognitive Task Analysis, the Critical Decision Method, and Naturalistic Decision Making while extending them into a founder-led executive-succession methodology. Read the methodology and its source notes.
This is Skagway’s stated methodology. It should not be read as a claim of universal outcomes, affiliation with the cited researchers, or a substitute for legal, tax, search, compensation, or fiduciary advice.
Editorial accountability
Ken is the named author of Skagway’s Insights and Framework content. Founder analysis, sourced factual background, and illustrative examples are labeled separately so readers can assess what kind of support each statement has.
Read the editorial policyContact
For confidential transition inquiries, contact inquire@skagwaysuccession.com.
What took decades to learn
should not disappear in a day.
The road ahead should remember how the company came this far.