“It’s been a great learning journey and I am proud to have worked here for the last decade,” said a CXO after announcing his recent exit. “We are grateful for his contribution in taking our firm to the next orbit of growth” responded the company spokesperson.

On the surface this is a mutual admiration story being played out in public by the employee and the employer. But listen to the next line from the employer — “We are looking for a successor and have retained a search firm”.

Isn’t that strange? Why is the CXO leaving the company he loved without waiting for his replacement? And why is the employer allowing its key leader to leave without finding a successor?

There are two things playing out here. First, both sides are being nice to each other and possibly not exposing the awkward ending to their relationship. Second, it is apparent that they haven’t worked on a successor for whatever reasons best known to them. The latter point is likely to hurt the organisation more in terms of impact.

Relationship and context

Let’s start with the relationship part. If you are in a senior role for a long time there are bound to be differences arising from time to time. Some of these differences can escalate and possibly turn into untenable relationships, leading to exits. But, an ideal separation would be if the transition to the successor happens on the watch of the predecessor. If only the external hunky-dory behaviour that depicts all is well could be internalised by both parties to work out a timeline for succession and knowledge transfer. Especially in CXO roles with long tenures, there is so much expertise and nuances to transition.

Can both parties keep their egos aside for a few more months and really play out the external happy story internally as well?

Make no mistake, people internally and externally are watching and inferences will be made in spite of happy send-off charades. The character of the leader and the culture of the organisation are also tested in these circumstances.

When my CoFounder quit his last job as Managing Director he only had a month’s notice to serve as per his contract. However, he and his employer agreed that they needed to identify and transition to the successor in the best possible way. Guess what, as I waited with utter frustration for him to join me, he worked another six months there. He said, “I started the operations and built them to a critical size for six years. Now, I can’t leave in a month because my entrepreneurial future is more important”.

The mutual trust, respect and, most importantly, the collective responsibility for the future of the organisation stand out in this case. This is difficult to achieve for many leaders and organisations as emotions and egos take precedence over the context.

The successor conundrum

Many organisations don’t identify successors except for CEOs or unless the CEO is in the retirement zone. Senior executives leaving is a given today and the only way you prepare for it is to identify a successor rather than pray that s/he stays. In spite of this, many CXOs still deliberately don’t bother with creating successors as it makes them dispensable or it creates alternate power centres.

Besides CEOs, all critical roles like CTO, CFO, CSO, CMO, CPO need succession planning. Even if not formally announced, there needs to be an informal understanding in the organisation about who is second in command. Organisations can periodically test the second line with every given opportunity to ensure that they are building a competent successor.

In one of my ex-Employers, the successor eventually took over after 10 years of the announcement. I know it looks extraordinarily long. But he was young and got phenomenal exposure working under the dynamic CEO. It also gave sufficient time for the rest of the leaders who had aspirations for the top job to make peace and settle down or leave.

Alternative plan

It goes without saying that having a succession plan is ideal. But, for whatever reason if there isn’t one would it be prudent for the leaving leaders to extend their time till the successor comes in? Most often it’s the employers who need to swallow their pride and ask/request their longstanding leader to extend the notice period and do the knowledge transfer.

Twice in my life, I have walked into Country Head roles as an external replacement as those organisations never planned for succession.

I can tell it was painful to take over and took longer to turn them around as the lack of understanding of internal dynamics hurt my transition pace.

Most of us are naturally curious on the “why” of it whenever a CXO resigns. The answers can be found by observing notice period completions and successor transitions. Either or both of these tell the real tale, not the press releases or photo ops.

Kamal Karanth is Co-Founder of Xpheno, a specialist staffing firm

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