The Idea in Brief
You’ve just won promotion to an executive role. To succeed, you’ll need to get up to speed quickly. What better source of wisdom than your predecessor? Yet few incoming leaders take advantage of this priceless asset, say Friel and Duboff. Some want to make a clean break with the past; others simply lack time.
But tapping your predecessor for insight can smooth the transition—benefiting you and your company. Take Intel. In the past two decades, the tech giant has had three orderly CEO successions, largely because it institutionalizes outgoing chiefs’ mentoring of new CEOs.
How to capture your predecessor’s knowledge? Take advantage of any formal succession processes your company has established. And initiate meetings with the outgoing executive to explore questions such as, “Which in-progress initiatives are most vital? Why?” “What cultural changes are needed?” and “Which of my team members can I count on to tell me the truth?”
The Idea in Practice
Five Ways to Capture Your Predecessor’s Knowledge
- Empathize with your predecessor. During the transition, you and your predecessor may be less than perfectly comfortable. If the outgoing executive is retiring, he may feel that he’s plunging into an abyss of insignificance. You may have anxieties about your own readiness to step into the role. Understand that you’re both uncomfortable, and behave generously toward your predecessor.
- Solicit input about your new team. Ask your predecessor to identify your team members’ strengths and weaknesses, their developmental goals, and their potential. Ask on what basis they were promoted into their roles. Find out who’s most likely to tell you bad news when it needs to be told. And map out the dynamics and major alliances among members.
- Extract lessons learned. Ask, “What problems did you encounter early on in this role? How might I head off similar ones as I transition into the role? What other problems could come up that I’m not seeing, and how can they be avoided?”
- Share the “first 90 days” plan. In the earliest days, you’ll need to make moves that exert a positive impact and that signal the key themes of your agenda. This includes ways in which you’ll depart from your predecessor’s strategy. Get your short-term plan on the table as soon as possible. Ask the outgoing executive which initiatives and capabilities spelled out in the plan are foundational and how best to usher them in. Probe for advice on low-hanging fruit you haven’t yet spotted. If your predecessor is tempted to engage in any undermining activity, this sharing may help to bring him inside the tent.
- Don’t assume you have to reach agreement. Evaluate your predecessor’s opinions and perspectives on how to excel in your new role based on your knowledge of him. In comments you’re inclined to dismiss, look for the grain of truth. In insights you’re rushing to embrace, look for the grain of salt.
A few years ago a highly respected and accomplished CEO retired. His name would be familiar to you: He went on to write a management best seller and now sits on the faculty of a prestigious business school. Executives routinely seek out his wisdom as they face their own strategic and organizational challenges. But in the months following his long and carefully planned retirement from the company, one person notably failed to call on him: his successor. This retired leader told us that he had offered his help, sincerely promised to make himself available whenever his counsel was needed—and then, after some time, was surprised to realize that the call had never come.
