The Succession Paradox
Leading at Light Speed is a powerful leadership book for businesses, public agencies, and nonprofits revealing the 10 specific ways an organization must act and behave to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization.
The Succession Paradox is a concept in Leading at Light Speed described in Chapter 9 along with three other Leadership Paradoxes. Buy the book to read about the other three.
It has often been said that the true test of a leader is how well you plan for your own departure. If the organization is well-stocked with capable successors, you have done your job. If the organization is left foundering, you’ve failed. The question isn’t whether you have a succession plan. It is how able you are to surround yourself with people you believe to be capable of stepping up and taking over. And therein lies the paradox.
Some of the seemingly most successful leaders fail to find the path through this paradox. They can’t handle the challenge of surrounding themselves with people who are ready to take their jobs. Again and again, we see examples of leaders failing to deal with the succession paradox.
On the other hand, we also see great success stories. The CEO of one of our client organizations built herself a team of highly capable leaders with whom she could surround herself. Her board of directors knew that should something happen to her, there was a surfeit of worthy successors. Elsewhere, the CEO of a constrcution company was concious of the destructive nature of this paradox and confonted it head-on. He organized a meeting off-site with the sole purpose of forming a new army of potential company leaders. Together with his management team, they identified the selection criteria, evaluated the candidates, and then changed the management structure to give three colleagues the opportunity to buy into the firm.
Cutting through the succession paradox is easy once you let go of the notion of your own indispensability. It’s another fear you have to overcome – a fear of the unknown. For some this is hard to do, but it’s a necessary step in building a high performing organization.
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