What CEOs can learn from soccer coach on successful succession

The World Cup is over and we are now back to work. I would like to give my last reflections on business lessons from the tournament by looking back as I look forward. So today I will talk about succession planning.

Juergen Klinsmann now coaches the USA. He was not with the German team in person when it won the World Cup on Sunday. But he was certainly there in spirit and influence.

That’s because it was Klinsmann, as coach of the national team, who began the overhaul that led to the win over Argentina. And it was Klinsmann’s hand-picked successor, Joachim Löew, who coached the team to that victory.

Löew was Klinsmann’s assistant for two years before taking over after the 2006 World Cup. After the tournament, Klinsmann announced that he was not renewing his contract, recommending that Löew take over. Franz Beckenbauer ensured that the succession happened.

What does all this have to do with business?

It can be said that the ultimate goal of leaders is to work themselves out of their jobs. Effective leaders plan an exit that is as positive and graceful as their entrance was.

They come to work committed to the mission and goals of the organisation and to their personal goals. When those goals are realised, the transition to new leadership becomes a primary focus. An excellent successor becomes, literally, the ultimate leadership responsibility.

Even empirical evidence abounds that succession planning and management development contribute to extraordinary business success. In their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras identified 18 organisations that have led their industries for at least 50 to 100 years.

Clock building vs time telling

They found that one of the key reasons such visionary organisations enjoy long-term success is because of their strong focus on succession planning and leadership development.

These companies develop, promote, and carefully select managerial talent from inside the company to a much greater degree than comparison companies, ensuring leadership excellence and continuity.

The analogy used here is clock building versus time telling. Imagine that you met a remarkable person who could look at the sun or the stars and, amazingly, state the exact time and date.

Wouldn’t it be even more amazing still if, instead of telling the time, that person built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she were dead and gone? Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is “time telling”; building a company that can prosper far beyond the tenure of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is “clock building”.

Those who build visionary companies tend to be clock builders.

Their primary accomplishment is not the implementation of a great idea, the expression of a charismatic personality or the accumulation of wealth. It is the company itself and what it stands for.

As we move into the 21st century and products, technologies, and markets blast through their life cycles, clock-building styles of leadership will become even more important.

Leaders spend much time thinking about how to drive the association successfully forward, but they usually spend far too little time thinking about the right time and way to leave.
A successful transition can be a seamless, productive, and unifying experience.

The way leaders choose to say goodbye is likely to be one of the ways they are remembered. If they execute their final leadership responsibility with the same care and attention that they gave to the first, their departure can be an inspiring gift to the enterprise and the people in it.

A succession plan ensures that the CEO has a sounding board of trusted advisers. Germany just proved to us that it is the difference that makes the difference.