Succession Planning – Beyond Batons, Buses, and Lotteries

What do you think of when you hear “succession planning?”

  • A baton passing from one person to another?
  • Some nice person being hit by a bus (probably while looking at their work email on their phone)?
  • Someone winning the lottery and dancing out the front door shaking their derriere at everyone in the lobby?

I hate all of these images, although I have used all of them at one point or another.

They perpetuate an unhelpful view of leadership as resting on one person – whether revered, reviled, or disregarded. It puts the leader at the top of a pyramid – or the bottom if you are a servant leader – all alone at the pointy tip.

Worse still, they indicate that succession is about moving from one individual to another – maybe overstating the importance of that one person, while understating the importance of everyone else in the system.

The question of succession then devolves into the operational. What does so-and-so even do and who would do that when they quit or face an untimely demise? Do we have a list of vendors and other key relationships? Should we name the conference room after them?

Those questions should be answered, but they are actually the easier questions to answer – scary but easy. The real value in succession planning is ensuring that changes at all levels of an organization are manageable – that the communities you serve, your donors, and your team will navigate the change with as minimal disruption as possible.

In leadership roles, we actually have to fight the impulse to have everyone look at us as the number one factor in the organization’s success (except when you’re having your annual review, of course!). We have to push them to look at the system that we are just one important part of. The health of the entire network of participants in your work is what will sustain the organization through your or anyone’s exit.

Think of succession planning meetings as being the annual physical of your organization – a chance to look at how you’re performing compared to how you wish you were and should be in terms of organizational practices. Some years will see you in need of a little vitamin D boost. Other years, there will be lots of follow up exams and maybe a specialist or two as you address bigger issues.

I know from experience that beyond the sudden departure, we hate to discuss succession – afraid we will jinx a good thing or poke the bear when times aren’t feeling quite so good. I worried that If my board started to imagine the organization without me that they might like the look of that.

And now, I coach so many leaders who know the organization isn’t ready for their departure. They just know it would fall apart without them. They imagine a series of conditions that have to be met before they can begin their departure – a key position filled, a funding stream back on track, a key relationship repaired.

While they worry about that, they also know that the whole operation relies too much on them.

I’ve thought all those things, convinced myself something tragic could happen if I were to leave and, at the same time, knowing I should never have managed the organization in a way that would leave me thinking about any of that.

And, most important, I wasn’t really including my board in any of this, and it was ultimately their responsibility to make sure the organization could withstand my inevitable transition.

Knowing I had pretty much allowed a lack of focused attention here to create the mess I needed to clean up and that succession planning is the “right thing to do,” I raised the topic with my board president. He was a remarkably thoughtful and willing partner in adopting a more holistic approach to succession planning that centered around an annual meeting with the executive committee of the board.

It became my favorite meeting of the year.

Before I get into the nitty gritty of that meeting, here are a few things you will want to keep in mind before you start your own succession journey:

  • It is important to define what succession planning means for your organization. I thought of it as a process to identify and develop employees and Board members who can replace leaders and staff in critical (hard-to-replace) positions in the face of expected or unexpected exits as well as how to manage the time those roles are vacant.
  • Succession planning requires vulnerability. As a leader, you need to build a trusting relationship with your board and personal fortitude to do more than share bursts of pride about the wonderful accomplishments of the past year. You need to own where the organization is unprepared and diagnose in partnership with them how to address those issues in the coming year.
  • Succession planning starts on your first day in your C-suite gig. Your analysis may be rough, but you need a sense of whether the organization or your team could thrive without you or without one of the other characters in the play called “Our Cozy Nonprofit.”
  • Many leaders delay succession planning for fear that the current state of affairs would be just too horrible for anyone to see. The organization will never be perfectly ready for your exit or anyone’s – there is no such thing. Whenever you leave, there will be aspects of the organization that you are proud of and areas you wish no one ever had to look at. This is one reason that a comprehensive approach to succession planning is so important. Everyone, especially your board, needs to understand the state of the organization – warts and all.

As you co-design this process with your board president or the committee charged with succession planning, here are the components that I consider critical to assessing the health of the organization. Many of these workstreams will take place throughout the year and through different committees but bringing them together for a single discussion – a big picture view of the current health of the institution – will help prepare your organization for the exit of any of the many important players involved in helping push your work forward.

  • A staff survey to assess morale, response to leadership, communication, and other elements of culture. Staff surveys should be administered at the same time each year, preferably so the timing allows for a thorough analysis before the annual succession planning meeting. In addition to sharing the results of the surveys, you should present a summary of key initiatives designed to address issues identified in the survey.
  • If you have more than 30 people, a turnover report by level and department. The goal is to understand where organizational vulnerabilities may exist In the event of the loss of any key manager (including you). Typically, this focuses on the staff as a group, each level of management, and by department.
  • A process to Identify the pipeline to key roles in the organization (including the executive director). Start with senior management and include as many levels as meaningful for your organization. The goal of this step is to identify employees within the organization who could cover each role during a transition, if needed.
  • Build a plan where there are gaps in the pipeline. If no person is ready, the conversation should involve identifying staff members who could be ready with professional development or training and starting that process. You may also create a coverage plan that includes sources for interim leadership, updated job descriptions, temporary support from other managers, an updated list of search firms, and any other information you or the board might want at its fingertips in the event of a sudden transition.
  • Review board tenure and other key metrics. This meeting is also an opportunity to think about succession at the board level. Some set of board members, either a nominating committee or executive committee, should review the membership of the Board and identify gaps to be filled, upcoming transitions, or misalignment in representation.
  • Review the board leadership pipeline. The board and executive director should be clear on which board members could potentially step in for the board president. Depending on your approach, you may want the bylaws to reflect your process. Longer term, your nominating committee may need to fill gaps in the pipeline to account for unique capacities that your board present brings to the organization.
  • Write it down. Whatever observations and decisions you make at the annual meeting should be shared with the full board during an upcoming executive session. Each year, you should also use this information to update the actual succession planning document that details who will cover what important tasks in the event of your exit or the exit of any key player in the organization. That document is an important bow on the annual succession planning process.

Of course, once the executive direct exits, boards will need a good transition plan for ensuring there is interim leadership in place and that a thorough search process can launch in a timely manner.  The discussion above can ensure that when the time comes, the transition plan can be put together thoughtfully and expeditiously.

Here’s hoping you are not reading this on your phone while walking in front of a moving bus! If you are, maybe having a thoughtful annual process in place will help everyone through a less-than-happy ending to your tenure, knowing that the system you are a part of is healthy.