As a part of my consulting work, I work with non-profits too.
Currently, I am helping the founder of a non-profit transition to a different level while developing the next line of leadership to take over. In this case, the founder has spent more than a decade in the role and plays the role with a flourish.
When I interviewed him to understand what he does and started jotting down the points on the whiteboard in his office, in a few minutes, the giant whiteboard was full. He was doing so much that I had to divide his role into themes. It seemed like a superhuman role. I remarked to him in jest that this was a case of multiple personality disorder – several roles inhabiting one person. The founder found the exercise quite revealing. Over this long period of time, he had not spent any dedicated time focusing on this aspect.
The next stage was to allocate percentages of how much time goes into each of these themes. This was again a revelation. Although the founder wanted to focus on the future of the organization, at the end of this exercise, he realized that he was getting dragged regularly into tactical matters.
All this conversation led seamlessly to the subject of Succession Planning.
Based on my consulting experience with non-profits, I realize that many a time when the founder has mastered his role to a point that it appears simplistic, the incumbent could be walking into an expectation trap. As an external consultant, my role is also to caution the founder of any unrealistic expectations from the incumbent. The incumbent will go through his own learning curve and the founder needs to set him up for success.
I recall a similar conversation a few months ago with an expatriate Head of a corporate entity. He was on secondment to India and was retiring in a few months. He was in the process of transitioning out of the role. As a consultant, I was working with him to identify his second line of leadership.
While ‘interviewing’ the second line, I could tell that they were pretty junior. While they were technically sound, there was no way they could fill the expat’s leadership shoes within the expected timeline.
My role in the assignment was to assess the readiness of the second line. Among other things, I conducted a 360 degree feedback survey for the likely incumbents. The internal customers from across the world also responded to the survey questions that were carefully crafted to assess leadership capability. When I presented the findings, it was clear that the second line had a long way to go in terms of their leadership capability.
In this context, we need to be aware of the following 4 traps:
Trap 1. A leader’s mastery making ‘difficult’ matters appear easy can be a mine field when it comes to succession planning. Such mastery, obviously, cannot be expected from the incumbent.
Trap 2. Leaders should not be under pressure to hand over the reins to one of their Direct Reports by default. Operating under such pressure, leaders could end up exaggerating the capabilities of the likely incumbent.
Trap 3. In some cases, the incumbent who is a Direct Report stakes claim to this Leadership role. This stems more from an entitlement mindset than from a genuine acknowledgement of suitability. Someone needs to provide an effective reality-check.
Trap 4. Grooming takes time, specially in the areas of leadership wisdom and judgement. Additionally, if the exiting Leader’s success has been based on his personal charisma (which is quite common in non-profits), there is no way an incumbent can replicate such success. The modesty of the exiting Leader in this matter could lead to a miscalculation and a consequent ‘miscarriage of justice’.
There are times when organizations make the mistake of falling into one or more of these traps.
If this happens, organizations suffer. They could regress and, in the process, dilute the painstakingly-built Brand equity.
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