Maintaining momentum amidst leadership change
Have you ever led a major initiative, team, or company to achieve gains and success only to have results slip after you have moved on to your next assignment?
This article focuses on the Sustained Transformation component of the EverSparq 4-Quadrant Framework (Figure 1) for creating a purpose-driven culture. A purpose-driven culture enables all team members to create a shared, fundamental understanding of how their respective efforts support the company mission, vision, values, and strategy, with specific intentional practices and practical tools that enable leaders to achieve long-term company success.
One such practice that will be covered in this article is succession planning. By enhancing your awareness and intention around succession planning, you are more likely to set your team and company up for longer term success by cultivating and preparing talent to slide into leadership and management gaps as seamlessly as possible.
What is Succession Planning?
Succession planning is the process of identifying and developing individuals who have the potential to smoothly transition into your role and assume your responsibilities once you have moved on to your next project, position, or other professional opportunity. Often contemplated in the context of cultivating existing talent, there is great value in thinking about succession planning more holistically, including early identification of potential successors during recruitment efforts.
Why Does Having an Intentional Succession Plan Matter?
Company environments are often highly dynamic, requiring people to change roles whether that be through advancement, moving between roles and departments, or moving in or out of the organization. Although this is sometimes a planned transition, more often, it is unexpected and may occur upon a moment’s notice. When this happens, there can be a vacuum of skill and institutional knowledge that can wreak havoc on remaining team members after a leader has moved on and have lasting impacts including but not limited to:
- Delays to implementing projects already in flight.
The shock of a leader’s departure can create a distraction for those team members who remain. They may take their collective foot off the gas pedal in the absence of clarity about the future of their team and projects. Why is the change happening? Will the newly vacated position be backfilled? Will the leader have the same priorities? Am I and my job vulnerable?
- Back-sliding on pre-existing gains.
Part of a leader’s responsibility is to maintain focus and help connect the purpose of a team’s outcomes to the overall strategic objectives of the company. Particularly for initiatives that have not yet been hardwired, when a leader leaves, there can be a lull in this kind of motivation resulting in not only a pause in progress but a loss of performance gains.
- Role confusion for those remaining.
The potential vacuum that occurs when a leader moves on can result in a group feeling rudderless. While they can probably coast for a brief period of time on previous momentum, as new issues and challenges emerge, in the absence of a knowledgeable leader, there is a greater risk of confusion arising about who should be making decisions. If more than one person tries to step into the breach, there is a greater likelihood of conflicting or inconsistent directives.
- Team attrition.
In certain circumstances, the anticipated departure of a leader can trigger an exodus of employees. This is often the result of a fear of the unknown like who the next leader will be, what the new leader’s management style is, or whether the change in question is a harbinger that the department or company is in trouble. As noted earlier, this can trigger a sense of vulnerability for remaining employees. This, in turn, results in a “survival mode” mentality that may cause employees to start looking for alternative employment opportunities.
- Recreating the wheel.
Over time, as the new normal sets in under new leadership, there may be a loss of institutional memory. While inviting new perspectives is always valuable in open-design thinking, losing track of those that are no longer present can result in rehashing decisions that were already made, “recreating the wheel”, and wasting valuable time and resources.
The net effect of this shortlist of potential impacts is non-value-added disruption and delays to the achievement of company success in a highly competitive environment. Thinking of a relay race, which team is more likely to win? The one with microsecond hand-offs to the well-prepared athlete or the one in which the baton is dropped (or even worse, lost) and then handed off to a stunned individual who is not prepared?
Transitions can be highly anxiety-provoking and can damage purpose-driven culture and the ability for companies to maintain forward momentum if not handled with sensitivity and practical planning.
How Can I Practice Effective Succession Planning?
The purpose-driven culture promotes connection, high engagement, and meaningful productivity gains by making work resonate on a personal level. (In the EverSparq article Connecting to Purpose: Creating a Purpose-Driven Culture, I outlined the Purpose-Driven Strategic Framework (Figure 2) and provided 5 tips for how to connect employees’ personal sense of purpose to the specific elements of the framework to support a purpose-driven culture.) A foundation for effective succession planning includes ongoing cultivation and hardwiring of line of sight for employees’ personal sense of purpose with the five components of the Purpose-Driven Strategic Framework. This takes intention and repetition over time but it will be well worth the investment when a significant change in leadership occurs. This can serve as an important anchor for the team as they weather the transition.
Regardless of whether changes in leadership are sudden or are anticipated, integrating the practice of succession planning will help minimize disruption when the situation does arise. Here are some steps you can take to infuse the practice of succession planning into your everyday work life.
1. Identify Potential Talent Early
Take the time to explore career aspirations with your direct reports as part of your ongoing interactions – you may be surprised by what you learn. While discussing the types of specific roles they may wish to occupy in the future as a way of identifying potential succession talent, I have found that it can be equally helpful to focus on skills, activities, and interests. Here are some common questions that I have been found to be helpful:
- What are you good at? (This may be based on subjective input from the individual, feedback from their colleagues, or through direct observation. There are also formal professional assessments that can help highlight native strengths)
- What do you enjoy doing the most? What kind of work/activities are you most passionate about? Why?
- What do you see yourself doing in 5 years?
- What types of work/roles interest you the most?
2. Be on the Lookout for Opportunities to Infuse New Talent
As you evaluate the future needs of your company, there may be functions, skills, and expertise that are harder to develop. This may be a good opportunity to seek out new talent to introduce into the company. Under most circumstances, your vision of the future will not yet have manifested but you can bridge the introduction of these new skills into the organization by hiring the individual to meet an immediate need with the possibility of grooming them into the new function as the company evolves and the need arises. They will already have been immersed in the purpose-driven culture with a greater likelihood of being able to transition into the new role more smoothly. I often think of this as a kind of gene splicing or grafting of new DNA into that of the company.
3. Develop Potential Talent with Potential Succession in Mind
Immersive Learning. Once you have a sense of what direction an employee’s professional trajectory might take, assign them to relevant projects and initiatives that will expose them, first-hand, to the skill requirements and dynamics of a particular role or type of work. This will help them build and develop the skills necessary to progress towards their career goals.
Formal Training. Determine employee learning styles and facilitate access to experiences that align best with their ability to integrate new information. This might include special virtual training course, advanced degree programs, or conferences.
Mentor and Coach. Consider providing access to professional coaching or mentoring to help individuals cultivate the skills necessary to advance when opportunities present themselves. Ideally, this would be provided directly by you as the supervisor, but this may not always be practical for the oversubscribed executive. If delegating to a professional coach, there should be a conduit for appropriate and mutually agreed upon information sharing with the supervisor so that career goals can be synchronized by the supervisor to the most relevant developmental opportunities. If accessing formal coaching or mentoring resources is not an option, identifying others in the company who can provide less formal, but no less valuable mentorship, can also be incredibly impactful. As an example, when I realized that I had an interest in learning more about strategy, with the support of my supervisor, I sought out the chief strategy officer and asked to be included in certain strategic planning activities.
Manage Expectations. A word of caution: avoid the temptation to overshare your thoughts about potential, specific future job placements or promotions with an individual unless you are sure you can deliver. While it can feel good in the moment to convey your confidence in an employee this way, you may either scare them off or create a sense of entitlement that will lead to disappointment if the opportunity does not materialize. Instead of saying, “I think you could be the CEO of the company someday,” focusing on what attributes and skills to develop that would set the individual up to be a viable candidate for a CEO role will show your support while avoiding the trap of overpromising and under-delivering.
4. Create Workplan Frameworks
A seminal practice for Baldrige organizations is what is referred to as “ADLI”: documenting and defining the company Approach to doing business (this could include policies & procedures, checklists, business plans, etc.), establishing methods for Deploying and testing new practices including tracking key performance indicators, Learning from the results, and Integrating successful practices into the company’s approach (e.g., iterative updates to policies and procedures, etc.)
With the Baldrige framework in mind, an example of an “Approach” activity would be to create a simple table that outlines the following:
- Key projects or initiatives for which the leader is accountable, a brief description of the project, a list of key involved stakeholders, and a secondary point of contact (if the leader is not available)
- Key meetings attended by the leader, a brief description of the meeting and the role the leader plays, and a secondary point of contact of delegate (if the leader is not available)
Ideally, maintaining this over time reduces a frantic, mad scramble when a leadership transition occurs. At the very least, creating this as soon as a leadership transition is imminent can be extremely helpful in reducing business disruption and maximizing business continuity. (As an added benefit, this kind of workplan can also be used for temporary leaves of absence, e.g., sabbaticals, parental or medical leave, etc.
5. Position Emerging Talent for Success
In addition to preparing individuals with direct exposure to circumstances and opportunities that will help them build muscle memory for the skills they will need to effectively succeed you or another leader, there are some less tangible activities that are no less valuable. Having them shadow you or leaders in positions that the individual might be interested in exploring as a future career path can help others start to see and view the individual as someone other or more than their current position. In some ways, this is akin to rebranding.
For example, if someone’s current role is in project management but they have great potential to move into operations, having that individual join you in relevant meetings and making it clear to others that they are growing their capabilities in this area can make it less jarring of a transition for when they formally move into a related role.
Similarly, placing them in charge of certain activities and making it clear to others that the employee has the authority and accountability for leading those efforts can facilitate repositioning the individual in the eyes of their peers and leaders so they begin to establish credibility. You will also have the opportunity to gather feedback from others to incorporate into what to focus on to support the individual in developing the appropriate skills and sensibility.
6. Thoughtful Messaging and Communications
Whether or not a leadership change is expected, provide clarity to those who remain about the intent of the change and what to expect. Doing so helps set up the incoming leader for success. Here are some common questions you may want to anticipate and be prepared to address:
- Is this part of a restructuring exercise?
- Will the position be backfilled? If so, by whom? And why were they selected (or what criteria are you using to select the next leader)?
- What is expected to change/not change?
- What should people remain focused on during the transition?
- How will progress of the transition be shared?
- Where should employees direct their questions, concerns, and feedback?
Depending on the circumstances and scale, it may be advisable to hold a staff meeting in which to share the news and provide an opportunity for questions. These interactions are often most valuable when they focus more on tangible, concrete actions with the goals of creating greater understanding and providing clear expectations about what the team can control. I have conducted and observed these in advance of a new leader’s arrival and/or as a means of introducing them.
If the successor is a colleague known to those in an impacted area, this is a great opportunity to continue to promote their ability and credibility in the eyes of their coworkers. Ideally, practicing the steps outlined earlier in this article, it will be less of a surprise and more of a non-event. If the new successor is yet to be identified, speak to the plan to find the right fit individual that will honor the legacy and contributions of the team or impacted group.
Be Prepared to Manage the Risks of Succession Transitions
Some of the more common risks during a transition in leadership have already been mentioned. Thinking through these in advance will help you prepare in a way that minimizes disruption and maximizes a smooth and successful transition. Table 1 outlines potential countermeasures that interim leaders or executive sponsors can employ for mitigating these more common risks.
Conclusion
Intentional and thoughtful succession planning can build accretive and sustainable transformation by preserving business continuity, minimizing distracting disruption, and reducing the constant churn of “recreating the wheel” after a leader moves on. Effective succession planning need not be expensive and does not require complex processes. Integrating practical, efficient, and effective practices like those covered in this article will add to your tool kit for building the type of purpose-driven culture that propels companies to success despite inevitable leadership transitions.
For questions or to find out how EverSparq can help you design any of the tools or practices described in this article to fit your company needs, please contact info@eversparq.com.
