Executive Succession: When Leaders Leave Well and Start Successfully
Leaving Well
This week I spent an evening watching another leadership succession announcement scene unfold. A chapter in an organization’s history and in the life of the leader began to come to a close. With that announcement, the organization and the leader began writing their next chapters.
Leaving well is one of the hardest tasks of leadership. Knowing when to go, and how best to leave depends on many internal and external factors. Good leaders don’t have many chances to practice, because their tenures are typically long and fruitful. Noticing and choosing when to leave, and understanding how to leave well, can be illusive insights. A good leader can damage their own legacy, or worse, hurt an organization they love by their actions and, at times, by their inaction.
Relationship Status: It’s Complicated
Successions are my favorite moment to step into an organization. These are engagements when I have the opportunity to ensure the success of the leaver, build the capacity of the organization’s staff and leadership in preparation for the coming leadership transition, and then facilitate the organization’s transformation in partnership with the new leader.
Leadership transitions are critical strategic opportunities for the organization and everyone involved. However, organizations typically underestimate the rich opportunity of succession readiness. It is the rare company or leader who invests the time, effort, and energy to prepare themselves and the organization for successful succession.
I’ve seen organizations invest in building their bench before a generational leadership succession, but not pay attention to the shifts the leader needs to make to leave well. These leaders can damage their reputations with decision overreach and hurt the future success of their team due to lack of preparation.
Other organizations invest in onboarding resources for the arriving successor but do not invest time and attention in preparing the broader leadership team and the organization, as a whole, for the leadership change. These teams can struggle to integrate their new leader effectively. Crucial time is lost and talent retention often suffers in these cases.
The least prepared organizations are the ones who think a policy, or a list of names of potential successors for various key roles, is all that is required for succession readiness.
Succession readiness involves some of these elements and more.
Whether the succession is a simple leadership change or involves a merger/acquisition/exit, a comprehensive approach to succession readiness ensures both sides of the equation are addressed: the end of one chapter, the beginning of the next, and the important gap in between.
Successions: a Time of Sunsets and Dawns
The night I came home from this most recent announcement I spent time reflecting on my work over the last several years. It has been steeped in succession. Companies sold. Partnerships forged. Founders retiring. Entrepreneurs exiting. Long-standing executives setting down their work and re-discovering their lives, talents, and interests once again.
And then comes the metamorphosis.
New leaders arrive. Long-standing leaders and contributors shift their posture, attention, and focus. Teams re-align. New groups take shape. New initiatives are evaluated and launched. The habits of the people and the organization are re-evaluated. New approaches take shape.
In the best successions, transformations abound. People and organizations are changed for the better. Legacies are celebrated.
It reminds me, as I reflect on my work with successions and succession readiness, how much I love twilight.
Twilight: that moment just before dawn and just after sunset. Light still illuminating the landscape. Just enough to see the world around you, but not the colors that fly at sunrise and sunset. Not the bright full light of day or the deep dark of night.
For me, twilight is a time filled with imagination and possibility. It is a time to ready yourself for what comes next. A time to reflect on what has come to pass, and to greet what is yet to come.
Twilight. A time to ready yourself for what comes next.
When I am lucky enough to be awake at dawn, awaiting the sunrise I am filled with the most spectacular anticipation. Those mornings, particularly at the beach awaiting the sunrise, twilight, and the coming dawn, that command my quiet attention. The world is quiet and still. My mind is at once at rest and attentive. Present to the current moment.
Standing in the Gap at Twilight: Reflections on Leadership Successions
When successions go well, the outgoing leader gives attention to the twilight, readying themselves and the organization for the next moment. They let go of what has been and prepare themselves for what is on the horizon.
Likewise, when successions go well the incoming leader has a twilight time before they begin. They take time to prepare to begin anew. (Hopefully having taken some time off after their last role came to a close!) As they prepare for the dawn of their next chapter, they imagine how to enter their new role, considering what leadership styles, habits, and postures to set aside the past, and what to take up as they begin. They thoughtfully consider how to plunge into this new organization and the life that emerges from this role.
Personally, I have experienced happy endings and hard endings. Good goodbyes and painful ones. Some of the endings have been extraordinary, others searing.
The great joy in my work today is the chance to stand in the gap between sunrise and sunset and companion organizations, teams, and leaders across the chasm from one chapter to the next; to help one leader leave well and set the stage for the next leader to begin.
Endings and beginnings and the space in between. This is my life’s work.
I am so grateful for the chance to live in the place of transformation: of people, teams, and organizations. The opportunity to make things better than anyone imagined possible is always my prayer when I am invited to stand in the gap and help one leader leave and another begin. Crafting happy endings and great beginnings.
Reflection Questions
What are the beginnings and endings in your life and career right now?
Where are twilight moments happening for you today?
Is there a beginning or an ending in your life, career, or organization?
Who is standing in the gap with you, helping you cross the chasm of twilight into the light of your next chapter?
May you have great companions alongside you as you navigate through your seasons of transformation and change. And may there be trusted confidantes alongside you, offering candor, counsel, and kindness in your twilight moments, helping you set the stage for a riveting next chapter.