Succession begins earlier than you think
— By Sheldon Morris
Ask a board when it should begin planning for the succession of its chief executive, and the honest answer is: earlier than it is comfortable to. Succession is the truest test of an institution's health, and it is almost always addressed a year or two after the moment it should have begun.
The reluctance is understandable. To plan for a leader's departure is to acknowledge that the enterprise is larger than the person leading it — a truth that capable leaders accept in principle and resist in practice. But an institution that cannot survive its own founder is not yet an institution. It is a personality with a payroll.
“An institution that cannot survive its own founder is not yet an institution.”
Succession is a process, not a name
The common error is to treat succession as the selection of a successor — a single decision, deferred until it can no longer be deferred. In fact the naming of a successor is the last step in a long sequence: the deliberate development of leaders, the honest assessment of readiness, and the cultural work of preparing an organization to be led differently.
Done well, this work is nearly invisible. Candidates are stretched before they are ready and supported when they falter. The board comes to know them not through a presentation but through years of observed judgment. When the moment arrives, the decision has, in a sense, already been made.
The cost of waiting
Succession addressed under pressure is succession addressed poorly. The candidate pool narrows to whoever is available; the board negotiates from weakness; the organization reads the haste as a signal. What might have been an orderly transition becomes a rupture. The remedy is unremarkable and difficult: begin before you need to.
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