Succession is a big deal in Zen and in most organizations. Recently, I acknowledged at lunch with Theresa and Ron that I had made mistakes, big mistakes in how I prepared for succession as CEO of Integration Charter Schools (ICS). We had also done some things right, things we’d begun long before that November evening, Dee’s birthday dinner, one of our first dinners out after Covid, on the deck of a fancy Madison restaurant overlooking Long Island Sound, when my retirement decision was made.
Until that evening, my retirement as CEO was always five years in the future, for a long time, five to ten years away. But the awareness that retirement was inevitable had always been there. I was pushing 67 when we opened our first school. So, from the beginning, we talked about succession. I hoped that our young leaders would be ready to take over when the time came. We’d already discovered how hard it was to find leaders from the outside who were able to “get” our culture. They failed because, one way or another, they saw the ICS culture as an obstacle to getting things done. The insiders who’d grown up at ICS understood that the culture was “our secret sauce.” As management guru Peter Drucker famously remarked, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Our young leaders were scared and excited by the prospect of succession: how did I learn to do what I did? We began meeting weekly to prepare them for corporate leadership. Over the years, leaders from both the instructional side of ICS and the operational side moved in and out of the succession discussions.
But what if our young leaders weren’t ready in time? I was also meeting with outside “candidates” – individuals who, if they came on board and worked side-by-side with me for two years, might be terrific successors. None of my “candidates” took the bait. I look back on those “negotiations” and I see my first big mistake. The nub of the problem: I wasn’t ready to set a date for retirement. I’d had no business, most would say, leading the charge when we opened our first school, but I did it. Over the succeeding twelve years we added three more schools and grew to 1500 students. We had over 300 staff, almost all happy to work at ICS. We were on track for continued growth as our newer schools moved toward full enrollment. Our annual revenue was already approaching $50 million. We were exploring expansion opportunities beyond Staten Island. There was no reason for me to stop until I was done – “five to ten years in the future,” I said – but no superstar was coming to ICS while my retirement lay somewhere beyond the horizon.
My succession planning was turning increasingly inward. I was learning every day how unique, how hard to “get,” and how critical our corporate culture was to our success. Two years later while I was in the hospital recovering from Carotid artery surgery, the urgency of succession planning ratcheted up. On the phone throughout the day with key staff, I realized there was too much in my head. I needed to share executive leadership more effectively. That’s when we created the cabinet: I would share leadership with four vice presidents – for administration, instruction, special education, and external affairs. At least one of the VP’s would join me in every meeting. I would copy at least one on all correspondence. While there was no certainty that my successor would come from the inside – ultimately, that decision would reside with our trustees – the vice presidents would, at least, be prepared. A few years before Dee’s birthday, one vice president, an operational manager, emerged as a consensus choice – not a unanimous choice – but the choice of the overwhelming majority – of our leaders and other key staff as our best bet to preserve our culture and our schools.
It is at this point that I made my second big mistake. My retirement was still at least five years away. I didn’t bring the consensus to the board. She was an out-of-the box choice who had joined our administrative team in our first year as a part-time gala coordinator and had served as my executive assistant before being promoted to VP for community affairs. Along the way, she’d gone back to school for her master’s in business administration. I worried that too many board members still saw her as an administrative assistant. If I presented the plan immediately, it would be dead on arrival. Instead, I promoted her to executive vice president, hoping that by the time I retired in “five years,” she’d have grown further into the job and changed trustee perceptions.
She didn’t have the five years. Before I knew it, it was Dee’s birthday dinner, “Stick a fork in me. I’m done.” What led to that moment? Was it the pandemic? Wanting more family time? The creep of age? All of those things? Eight months later, we were celebrating at the best retirement party ever. (Thank you, Jodie).
Hindsight is beautiful. In hindsight, there are always alternatives. If I’d seen that moment of Dee’s birthday two years earlier (or better yet two and a half), I could have collaborated with our team and our trustees to select a successor who could work alongside me for two years, absorbing the ICS culture – “drinking the Kool Aid,” Jenna, one of our home-grown principals, called it – the secret formula of our success. Would that have been better? If I’d shifted into transition mode, would we have opened our fourth school? Would we have moved ahead with our milestone real estate deal, for the first time owning rather than leasing a school facility?
In hindsight, I could have gone to the board immediately with our consensus successor plan. Yes, it may have been shot down, but in hindsight, when the board ultimately opted to go in another direction, we’d wasted two years. Better to have worked on a plan which had board approval.
In hindsight, I see another failure. In hindsight, it seems that our trustees did not understand how critical our corporate culture was to ICS success, how unique that culture was, and how hard it was for “outsiders” to grasp. I’d made presentations to the board on our culture and why I thought an “inside” candidate would best serve ICS at this moment, but in hindsight, I see that, although integral to the operation of our schools, the board of trustees did not participate in our culture. Trustees who visited the schools and walked the halls, who talked with staff, could feel the something “special,” but they couldn’t get the source. You had to “live” in the schools to get it. And some trustees didn’t get the culture at all. We believed in “second chance’s” for everyone – students, faculty, administrators. I was told, “You wait too long to fire people,” by trustees who “saw” only the staff we let go. The “unfired” who went on to become stars were invisible. In hindsight, I wish I’d done a better job of bringing the culture to the board. I’m not sure how to have done it, but I wish I’d gotten them some Kool Aid.
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