Unlearning: Succession

Why leadership capacity is more important than leadership candidacy

Unlearning: Succession

I once knew a CEO who would bring the ‘upcoming CEO’ to every meeting, acclimatizing them to their new role and introducing them to people internally and externally. You might think that this is good succession practice and that the CEO cared enough about the organization to plan for the future by getting someone ready to take over when they left. Having a handover process can help solve the problem of the disruption caused by a CEO leaving and not downloading crucial information to others in advance.

If you thought all of these things, you have likely embraced ‘succession thinking’. You may believe that the more we plan for departures, the better, and that it is always best to elevate someone in the organization and get them ready to lead in advance. This has been how we have often approached leadership succession. Except that this went on for 5 years. And, every few months it would be a new person that would be considered to be the ‘next CEO’. The current leader spent years of time, energy and financial resources onboarding someone new, only to have them leave before they could take on the role.

There seemed to be 2 reasons for the ‘new CEOs’ leaving before moving into the position:

 1.    The timeline for advancement was too long – with no actual leaving date, there was little incentive to stay.

2.    The current CEO was trying to control what the future looked like and how the next person would lead. Trying to imprint themselves on the next person was creating an untenable position for the next person as they were interested in leading not following.  

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