Your Succession Plan: 5 Foolish Ideas to Ensure that it All Goes Wrong

You’ve poured your heart and soul into building your company, organization, family, committee or community group.

As the leader, you've achieved a great deal. You've guided decisions, solved problems, built relationships, and carried responsibilities that few others fully understand.

As you prepare to pass the baton, here are the 5 thing you can do to screw up this transition. Do a handful, or better yet, do them all, and you will leave the place much worse off than you left it and the people involved in a tailspin.

5 Ways to Sabotage your Succession Plan

1. Keep a death grip on your control and leadership. The current leadership is in place, knowledgeable, and functioning at a high level. Keep all the key relationships, knowledge, and decision-making authority to yourself. If anyone asks about succession planning, provide just enough information to create the illusion that something is happening.

2. Be an ostrich. Put your head in the sand and either don’t acknowledge that a transition is inevitable or at the very least delay taking any meaningful action as long as possible.

3. Skip the apprenticeship. Why let future leaders learn alongside you when they can figure it out after you're gone? Don't expose them to the nuances, culture, or unwritten rules that make the organization function. Don't give them meaningful responsibilities, nor let them practice decision-making under your watch.

4. Don’t socialize the transition. Don’t share with others your transition ideas or plan. Make it a complete surprise. Leave it to the last minute and without explanation so that everyone around you can be left wondering why you made your choices or second guess your decision.  That way you increase the odds of simultaneously shocking and disappointing everyone.

5. Expect instant mastery. Never mind that you've spent years developing your expertise. The successor should immediately possess the same judgment, confidence, relationships, and institutional knowledge to be successful. I particularly like this approach in a family where the most financially savvy family member currently leads the family finances and the next in line is possibly the least comfortable with financial matters.

When people don't know who will lead next, whether that person is prepared, or how important decisions will be made, uncertainty grows, confidence erodes, and anxiety takes its place.