Pass the torch before it burns your fingers
Posted on September 22, 2008
Succession planning is something that every business has to grapple with unless the founder has an exit strategy to sell out before the heirs have a chance to fight over everything. But what about communities?
How is the torch passed from generation to generation when there is no such exit strategy?
In a lot of ways, community succession planning is a function of the businesses that make it up. As business owners identify the next generation of leadership in their companies, they place these individuals in positions of influence within the community. They may sponsor these young professionals’ participation in community leadership programs. They may nominate them for various community board positions. However they choose to tap these new leaders, their motivation is largely the same: securing a say in decisions that will affect their businesses in the future.
The whole idea of succession planning is setting up a leadership structure that will continue to increase your wealth after you have let go of the reigns. This principle holds true whether you’re talking about a small business, a large corporation, or a community. The ideal scenario is one in which the younger generation recognizes new opportunities that will grow the business or community beyond the founders’ imaginations. And, in a lot of cases, that means a new leap of faith for the stakeholders.
A true passing of the torch involves a new vision that will be more sustainable than the previous one. It involves creating that vision within the context of a world yet to come– one that includes new technologies, new modes of communication, and whole new economies. Sometimes, that means embracing a vision that you might not fully understand. But, that is the nature of risk.
At its worst, a succession plan gets tied up with the ego and a spiral of ill-conceived plots are hatched. Leaders attempt to pass the responsibility for the future without passing the rewards of the future. The fear of relinquishing control gets in the way of providing the kind of real opportunity that shapes new leaders. The end result is usually an exodus of real talent to competitors. In which case, the leaders are left with a less talented pool from which to choose their successors. And, in grasping for control, the leaders compromise their own futures.
At its best, a succession plan becomes a shared vision that provides a new rallying point. Leaders take an active, collaborative role in defining the vision. They identify the merits of future leaders and give them challenges that will be most rewarding for the individual and the company or community. In doing so, they engage younger talent, incorporate new possibilities, and secure a bright future for generations to come.
For leaders that hang on without a plan, the results rarely do much for posterity. Aside from alienating the very people who hold the key to the future, they further alienate their company or community from more progressive-minded partners. This is the point at which the torch begins to burn the fingers of its bearer.
In this region, tenure is something that is not taken lightly. Carilion Clinic boasts more than 500 employees in their Quarter Century Society, who have more than 25 years of continuous service. Railroad and utility jobs are equally coveted. In the Valley, these kinds of jobs mean security for life if you can just roll with the changes. That’s not to say that loyalty is something that shouldn’t be valued. It’s increasingly rare.
However, when a community relies so heavily on a few large employers, the collective vision can become fairly shortsighted. We need only to look to the coalfields to our west and the mill towns to our south to see examples. There is no real shift in vision when your job is to extract coal from the ground or weave cotton into fabric. There is only the security of another day’s wage and the promise of a pension.
In these instances, succession planning is fairly autonomous. Those who have reaped the rewards and held the responsibility pick people who will continue the status quo. They pick people who won’t rock the boat and upset the natural balance of the working poor and the privileged few.
We face similar succession issues at the national level, the state level and the local level. The question on each of those fronts is whether or not the vision of the future is compelling enough to justify the risk. None of us know exactly what the outcomes of our decisions will be. But, given the choice, we can either embrace new possibilities and proceed with optimism, or we can grasp for some level of acceptable stability and preserve the status quo. If we choose the latter course, we have to accept the risk that the torch will burn our fingers because we were unable to pass it.
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