HR Practice

Planning for Your Successor:

Lessons from Our Predecessors

By Raphael Daoud Jackson

Planning for one’s successor is, arguably, a practice as old as the most fundamental form of human society: the tribe. Appropriately, some of the most inspiring succession advice I’ve found is hundreds of years old. It is helpful, when planning for the future, to draw on the wisdom of the past.

Classical examples of the sociology of leadership succession are found in the Muqaddimah, a seminal volume of world history written in 1377 by Ibn Khaldūn. In this work, ibn Khaldūn describes the rise and fall of empires and dynasties as a cycle that begins anew every three generations, or roughly three hundred years (Ibn Khaldūn, et al., 1967). Khaldūn argued that early societies, whether consciously or intuitively, planned in intervals of three generations. The first generation founds an empire on a set of principles; the second generation realizes and expands upon those principles. The third generation enjoys the benefits won by the work of previous generations, but it grows more concerned with maintaining a lifestyle than with adhering to the principles that made that lifestyle possible. Echoes of dynastic succession may be seen in twenty-first century theories of the “business exit strategy.” In the microcosm of professional succession this cycle, in my experience, takes place over a mere five years.

The question remains then how can organizations strike a balance between profiting from the energy and pioneering spirit found in its newer incoming leadership, while not having to lose the wisdom and experience of the outgoing senior leadership?

First, senior and incoming leadership may preserve institutional memory through documentation. “Put it in writing, codify processes and record best practices and keep a history,” notes J.J. Madsen in a 2008 Buildings article. Political and academic organizations often designate this role to a “historian.” A more efficient model for the corporate organization is to allocate time to each senior employee for documentation. Incoming leadership should make it a point to analyze and interpret these records. Other employees, lower in the hierarchy, might bring valuable perspectives to these records.

Traditional Pakistani wisdom recommends that we “play with a child for seven years, teach him for seven years and befriend him for seven years.” From this simple advice we can extract a wealth of wisdom in organizational management. Just as in the case of recalculating three generations as calculated into five years for a modern organization, we can calculate the seven years stipulated for raising and educating a family member to six to seven months when preparing a successor. In the management world play may be interpreted as shadowing; both involve the phenomena of witnessing and participating in the daily interactions of your mentor in a controlled environment and without the assumption of full responsibility. Teaching is interpreted as theoretical grounding, an important aspect in the development of a successor. Professional skills and competence alone are not suitable criterion on planning for your successor. When interpreting the ‘Befriend’ aspect it is important to note that sociability plays heavily in this decision making processes. Mentors typically chose mentees that they are friends with (Madsen, 2008).

The three points and reasoning can be elaborated in the following order.

Play—Shadowing

Mentors should be willing to take on mentees as interns or shadows. A mentee given the opportunity to shadow a mentor learns a great deal of the day to day responsibilities and the mentee can put the documentation of his mentor in a practical perspective.

Teach—Educating

The theoretical concepts learned from coursework, textbooks and lecture settings start to take on an entirely new meaning when they can be referred to practical circumstances. This is why it is befitting to include a course of instruction either during or after, but never in lieu of the shadow period.

Befriend / Advise

At this stage in training the mentor should step back and allow the mentee to assume responsibility. This reaffirms trust between the two partners. Of course the mentee will continue to receive advice from his or her mentor, but the mentor should focus on advising the mentee as s/he would advise his or her peers. This relationship of equals encourages a balanced relationship in when the mentee requests feedback more frequently then the mentor offers it. Advice is more likely to be reflected upon and internalized when it is solicited; unsolicited advice sows discord in many relationships, personal and professional.

Planning for your successor has long been considered the domain of retirees, but even younger professionals should consider the practice. Changing dynamics in the workforce have lead to the likelihood of younger employees returning to previous employers. An organization that isn’t a perfect fit early in a person’s career may later provide wonderful opportunities. A change in management may also take an institution in an entirely new direction.

A colleague of mine who is a school librarian worked for a private school that neither understood nor appreciated the role of a media specialist. My colleague didn’t see himself at the institution for longer than one year, so he created a strategic development plan and a list of policy and proposal documents to prepare his successor. The administration filed these documents, probably without reading them. Two years after my colleague resigned, the school was headed by a forward thinking principal who also held a Masters in Library Science. After reviewing the documentation she not only incorporated his plans into the overall school development plan, she insisted that the administration find and rehire the “author of the reports.” My colleague is now working at his old job under new leadership with a new raise.

Planning for your successor is a serious step taken by professional who have a stake in the continuity of their organization. Even employees that don’t find their grievances sufficient cause for resignation might benefit from planning for their successors as an exercise in self-evaluation. A successful tenure at any organization is all the more appreciated when this success reproduces itself creating a legacy for the institution.

References

Ibn Khaldūn, Rosenthal, F., Rosenthal, F., Rosenthal, F., Rosenthal, F., & Rosenthal, F. (1967). The muqaddimah : An introduction to history (2d ., wi corrections a augment bibliography ed.). Princeton: N.J. Princeton University Press.

Madsen, J. J. (2008). (6) ways to groom your successor. Buildings, 102(1), Jan. 2008.

Professionals for the Public Interest Goes Public

On Wednesday, May 20, 2009, 19 national and global organizations including DPE launched Professionals for the Public Interest: Associations and Unions Defending Professional Integrity (PftPI).

The press conference brought together leaders of professional associations and unions, who stressed the importance of professional integrity to professionals and the public. The event marked a culmination of more than two years of DPE outreach. It also announced the PftPI website, www.pftpi.org.

A key component of the website: a contest, “Integrity at Work,” for the most compelling story about defending professional integrity against external pressures. The deadline for submissions is July 31. To read the contest rules, click on http://pftpi.org/index.php/tell-your-story/. Five finalists will be announced on Labor Day. Website visitors will choose a winner by October 1.

A second key component of the website: an invitation to share your ideas about strengthening professional integrity against external pressures. Heightening the timeliness of the invitation is a March 9 memorandum from President Obama, who directed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to develop recommendations for strengthening scientific integrity in the Executive Branch. To see the President’s memorandum on scientific integrity, click on http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Memorandum-for-the-Heads-of-Executive-Departments-and-Agencies-3-9-09/.

DPE President Paul E. Almeida (right) opened the event. He said the goal of PftPI is to permit professionals “to do their work on the basis of expertise, experience, and high standards, with transparency and trust. Achieving that goal means a better quality of life for all of us.” He declared:

“The theme that we focus on today matters to professionals and to the public. Do you want your children to learn something at school? Do you want to survive a hospital stay? To fly safely? To breathe the air and drink the water? To have full access to the information that fuels progress in a democracy? If you answer yes, you value the ability of professionals to do their jobs right.”

Glenn S. Ruskin (left), Director of Public Affairs for the American Chemical Society (ACS), underscored the theme: “To be a solution provider, scientists and engineers must . . . have unfettered freedom to explore issues and express their findings in a transparent, unbiased and understandable manner.” Federal censorship could impair the work of scientists and engineers and yield bad public policy. ACS was “encouraged and galvanized” by the March 9 memo from President Obama.

United American Nurses President Ann Converso (right) praised the coming together in PftPI of professional associations and unions: “. . . every minute spent at the bedside of a patient, RNs are acting both as health care advocates, protecting our patients and protected by our union, and highly trained professional caregivers. For RNs to do their job well as nurses, they must play both roles.”

Converso provided “a real-life example”:

“The Michigan Nurses Association/UAN represents RNs at Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo.

“Nurses have told us, and a mountain of research has confirmed, that when there are too few RNs at the bedside, patient care suffers. Patients suffer with increased falls, secondary infections, hospital-acquired pneumonia and more. Surgery patients in hospitals with too few nurses are 6 percent more likely to die from complications like shock and sepsis.

“At Borgess, due to budget constraints hospital management changed the RN-patient ratio to give each nurse more patients every day, every shift. Since then, patient satisfaction has dropped by almost 20 percent. Patient falls and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers increased dramatically. And there has been a decrease in nurse satisfaction and an increase in RN turnover.”

At Borgess, a union is battling against external pressures so professionals can do their jobs right – in the interests of the public.

Maintaining professional integrity against external pressures is often not easy. It has, in the words of Mary W. Ghikas (right), Senior Associate Executive Director of the American Library Association, “put librarians in the center of many battles – to provide information services to immigrants and English-language learners, to welcome teens into the library, to serve the homeless, to provide unpopular materials, to protect library records from unauthorized search.” Not to defend professional integrity, however, carries costs for the public: “narrowing public discourse as competing orthodoxies wall themselves off from disturbing concepts, in the minds that are not challenged, in new works that are not created.”

Mark S. Frankel (left), Director, Program on Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, put the public launch of PftPI in a larger context: “It is useful to view science as a ‘community of common purpose,’ which enables scientists to think beyond their own self-interests to the application of their knowledge and skills to the greater social good. The Professionals for the Public Interest Coalition is an even larger community, bringing the power of a coalition of professional groups in common purpose to the service of society. The Coalition will provide a platform for professional communities to share information and best practices for strengthening and promoting professional integrity. Additionally, it will provide a voice for professionals in many fields of study that address critical societal issues. AAAS looks forward to working with other members of the coalition to advance the public interest.”

AFT President Randi Weingarten (right) welcomed the alliance between professional associations and unions that PftPI represents: “When professionals are left out of policy-making what we get is top-down, ivory-tower policies that don’t work in the real world. Worse, what we get is a stifling of the thought process and the freedom to speak that we make and see real serious mistakes. . . . But the flip side is this, when professionals are accorded the respect, the recognition and the rewards that we and they so rightfully deserve there is no limit to what can be accomplished. School research is quite clear about this: When there is collaboration in school environments, we see successful schools and we see successful outcomes for children.”
Photos by Chris McManes, IEEE-USA.

Besides the organizations that the six speakers represented, the endorsing organizations in PftPI are Actors' Equity Association, American Federation of Musicians; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; American Library Association-Allied Professional Association, American Public Health Association; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers; National Association for the Education of Young Children, National Association of Social Workers, Office and Professional Employees International Union; Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union; and United Steelworkers.

For the complete comments of the speakers, their biographies, videos of the public launch, and other background about PftPI, see the PftPI Virtual Press Packet at http://pftpi.org/index.php/virtual-press-packet/. For more information about Professionals for the Public Interest, please contact DPE President Paul E. Almeida, palmeida@aflcio.org, 202-638-0320 ext 112, or Executive Director David Cohen, dcohen@dpeaflcio.org, 202-638-0320 ext 113.

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