Once I turned president at 29, it occurred over a weekend. On Friday, I used to be a regional gross sales rep. On Monday, I used to be operating a $30 million firm.
There was no five-year coaching plan. No govt onboarding. No fastidiously choreographed succession runway. Over the following 15 years, we grew the enterprise from $30 million to greater than $230 million and the staff from 50 folks to 450.
On the time, it regarded reckless. Wanting again, I’m satisfied that what appeared like an obstacle for me was truly a bonus for the corporate—one a sluggish, tidy transition might by no means have produced.
Reluctance to let go
We are likely to romanticize gradual succession. We love the language of overlap, phased transitions, shadowing, and “correctly easing into change.” It sounds mature. It sounds strategic. However after watching dozens of founder-led and family-owned companies navigate the identical second, I’ve began to suspect that sluggish succession usually has much less to do with the successor’s readiness and extra to do with the present chief’s reluctance to let go.
Analysis backs this up: Founder-CEO transitions fail at two to 3 occasions the speed of non-founder ones. The issue isn’t often functionality on the opposite aspect of the handoff. It’s the handoff itself.
In fact the outgoing chief is aware of extra. They’ve led longer. They’ve made extra selections. They’ve absorbed extra scars. However each further day they maintain on tightly, each determination they proceed to make, each dialog they proceed to personal, widens the hole between their data and the successor’s eventual functionality.
In some unspecified time in the future, succession stops being about improvement and begins being about dependency.
