Q008
How do you get someone
ready to step up?
our take .
You own and operate your own business (or let’s pretend you do). To date, your business outcomes, financial outcomes, and personal attributes have been intertwined and reflected in the vision, pace, risk tolerance, and culture of your company.
At some point, the owner’s paradox reveals itself. Between growth, liquidity, risk, and control, you begin to feel real tension between your personal priorities and what could best serve the business. For a while, you let your personal priorities win out. Keep a good thing going, but avoid substantial risk and change. It works, until it doesn’t.
Then some of your A players start coming to you with ideas. They seem antsy, wanting to see the company grow. Some of the concepts sound absurd and ignorant of the risks you know all too well. But some of them make sense. You start to wonder: what if that person steered the whole ship? What would the company look like then?
The amusing reality is that, when thinking about someone else in the driver’s seat, we tend to have significantly higher expectations than the status quo. Thus, the HBR stat on 40% of new CEOs not meeting expectations. Change should always be better, and we tend to define better… aggressively.
For all the projects and teams a person may lead, leading the whole company is fundamentally different. We’ve mentioned in previous editions that the best candidates may translate to different styles of leadership, different strategic priorities, and a different pace. Alongside all the potential differences, it’s also critical to ask: what’s reasonable? What’s possible? And what should the margin of error be for any shifts or stumbles?
Don’t be like Henry IV. Make a plan where you empower your successor to realistically lead, accepting that the journey will be imperfect, just as yours has been.
on paper.
character to consider: Henry IV
Legacy and Lack of Preparation
While Shakespeare portrays the eventual transition from Henry IV to his son, Henry V (Hal), as a successful handing off of power and change in the nature and direction of the monarchy and the monarch, the road to get there is rocky. In fact, up until the last minutes of Henry IV’s life, he harbors deep doubts about Hal’s fitness to rule (thanks, generally, to the influence of Falstaff and the taverns of Eastcheap) – meaning, paradoxically, that he does little to prepare his son to take the throne or groom him for leadership, resulting in challenges to Hal’s authority when he inherits the throne. Instead of fostering trust, Henry IV alienates his heir (whom he presumably would not have chosen to succeed him, if he had an option). And yet, Hal tries to appease his father throughout his life, but even on his deathbed Henry IV thinks his son unprepared to take up the throne, and overly ambitious, to boot.
Divergent Paths
One of the strengths of Hal’s leadership is that he recognizes that to be different from his father he must separate himself from his father, placing himself into exile and, in effect, taking time away from the family to gain experiences elsewhere. This self-imposed absence does little to gain his father’s trust in the moment. Even as he lies and dissembles and connives his way to power, Hal leaves court to live in Eastcheap with the masses. This pivot in approach, so different from his father’s understanding of power, is what eventually makes Hal an effective leader in his father’s stead.
The Weight of Expectations
From The Hollow Crown: “For Shakespeare’s King Henry IV, as for so many other monarchs, executives, and leaders of all kinds, the hardest thing about grooming a successor is overcoming his own overpowering ego. Even the most adroit inheritor may never be able to please the incumbent, who suspects that no one can quite measure up to his (or her) standards.” And Henry IV had put in place high standards as he still sought to legitimize his and his heir’s claim to the throne after usurping Richard II. Hal knows this, and plans his own pivot away from the way his father, obsessed with external approval and reputation, rules, turning to teachers like Falstaff and the common folk over whom he will eventually rule to learn the lessons that will – eventually – solidify his legitimacy.
Works consulted:
Henry IV, the Royal Succession and the Crisis of 1406
Ten Ways to Tie a Strong Strategy to an Equally Strong Succession Plan
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