WORKING TO REPLACE YOURSELF, PART 2

By Nels Lindberg, DVM, Production Animal Consultation

“What remains the same” are the foundational core values their family has held for six generations that have been instilled into the very DNA of their organization. For six generations to survive and thrive since 1857, they have taken repeated, intentional steps to ensure the legacy of this bank through humble leadership.

I had the honor of speaking to this organization’s customers. I quizzed the incredible audience of business owners on the number of generations in their businesses. I started at three or more generations and worked my way up to six or more generations. At the end, there were two people left holding up their hands. One was the gentleman I had been sitting by, and the other was a sixth-generation dairyman from Ireland who now lives in America.

I first discussed the topic of strategically and practically working to replace yourself in the winter issue of Protein Producers, but I wanted to revisit the topic for two reasons. First, this topic is critical for the life and survival of the living, breathing businesses or teams we lead. Second, we often fail at or are not intentional about replacing ourselves as leaders. This failure is responsible for killing more tenured, successful businesses, often slowly and painfully, than any other reason. Successful organizations usually do not just collapse acutely. Most can sustain at the status quo level of quality for quite some time, but they often go into capital preservation mode rather than growth mode. They forget to intentionally lead and grow the “next man up” for the successful continuation of the organization. The following are four more key aspects for “passing the baton”.

1. Transfer of Trust – Whether we are passing the baton to the next leader of the business or the next leader of the animal health team, it all begins with the transfer of trust. The transfer of trust begins by simply trusting the next man up. We must trust them first, before we ask them to trust us. We often get this wrong because we think the next man up must show us through their actions that we can trust them. In fact, we must do the opposite. If we want the next man up to trust us, we must first trust them. Then we must realize and accept that they will make mistakes and fail. When they fail, ask them to reflect and share what they have learned, while you act as the backstop and clean things up. The transfer of trust occurs over time, very intentionally, and requires many vulnerable, humble conversations. You have the opportunity to tell them, “I trust you, and I trust you to screw it up, but I will have your back.”

2. Letting Go of Ego – I wrote about this last time, but I would like to revisit it because it is very difficult to successfully carry out repeatedly over time. As leaders of businesses, we have grown over time and are confident in our knowledge and work. We are confident that we can keep running the organization or team for another 10 years or even past our death! We must acknowledge the future is not about us, as we are replaceable. We need to humbly accept that 100% of us will eventually die and that the next generation will be better than us if we did our job in bringing on the right next man up. The challenge as we transfer power and trust is the next man up must be patient with the utmost respect for the work done before them and we as current top brass must relinquish some control and decision making to the next generation and give them the opportunity to either fail or succeed. Our ego often gets in the way of this. As the next man up assumes more decision making, we get irritated and pull the reins back by overruling or changing their decision. This behavior is a cardinal sin because the next generation then just backs off. If this is done repeatedly, we slowly kill off their spirit. We as leaders must let go of our ego, look the next man up in the face, and admit that it is a struggle. We need to ask them to respect the work we have done over our lifetime and be patient with our struggle to let go of our ego and control.

3. Being Specific and Providing Clarity – As we transfer control, decision making, and power to the next generation, we must be clear on who is doing what. To be honest, I am absolutely terrible at these kinds of specifics. Dr. Ty, who is my partner in our practice, is much better at this and should probably be writing on this instead of me.

If you are not good at this, reach out to someone that is. An outside consultant can help create clarity and get the details on paper for the leadership team. We want the details on paper so the whole team or next layer of leadership understands who is doing what. Notice that I said the whole team. The whole team needs clarity and specifics on what is going on with leadership transitions, so they know who to ask what questions to. They also need to know what is going on because unknowns surrounding leadership create an uneasiness in people and a lack of trust in the developing situation, which can lead to gossip and chaos or even people deciding to just leave.

4. Understanding the Emotional Journey – As leaders of a team or organization of any size, we have usually achieved that position by taking the initiative to act and executing at high levels, creating consistent and significant success. This often makes us dominant in nature, even pushy, controlling to varying degrees based on the person, and resistant to emotions for the stability of the organization or team. It is in that process that we become resistant to or ignore our own emotions. We have lived life by “punching cows through keyholes” and creating success, regardless of emotion. However, we must recognize that transfer of trust, transfer of leadership, and transfer of control is an extremely emotional journey. Some show that emotion externally, but most hold it internally and even bury it in their soul. For a successful transition, we must recognize the emotional aspect of this journey. Then, we must be able to talk about it and communicate to the next generation the internal struggle of “letting go”. We must let them know that we are working on it and that we need their help and respect in the process. As leaders, we will traverse at least some, if not all, of the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) during the journey. We are lying to ourselves if we do not think we go through the minimum of denial, anger, and acceptance to some degree. We cannot ignore those stages. If we ignore our emotions and the stages of grieving, we end up burying the pain of the journey which leads to a very unhealthy transition. This can then lead to leadership death of the organization and intangible, or even tangible death, of us as a leader, and no one involved wants that.

The keys to successful transition of leadership, decision-making, control, and power are some of the most difficult steps we as leaders and businesses take. We wage war daily on the intentional action items we must execute to thrive from year to year. Given the difficulty and challenges of that daily war, we often fail to look forward past ourselves. We fail to look past our own personal growth or financial gain. We then pull our head out of the trenches after 10, 20, or 30 years and realize we need to make sure this living breathing thing lives on beyond us.

Let’s “look up” today. Let’s reach out to others that have done it for generations and ask them how they were handed the baton or ask them how they handed off the baton. I do not have all the answers, and I often struggle with many of the points I have outlined in the two articles I have written on this topic. Ultimately, it is up to me and it is up to you to study this process, research it, reach out to others that have done it successfully, and take intentional steps for the successful transition of leadership, decision making, power, and control to the next generation or next man up. We want no regrets!