For any leader, succession planning is critically important. An organization cannot hinge on the efforts or personality of a single leader. Eventually the current leader will leave, either through retirement or to pursue other opportunities. While the loss of leaders is always lamentable, it does give rise to new leaders and new ideas which is an important part of the growth of any organization. I think this is also true in education since as society and times change, it becomes helpful to have leadership that can more closely identify with modern learners. There will always be a gap, which is inevitable since our system does not adjust as fast as our learners change, but new ideas can help to shrink it at least.

But succession planning is also tricky, because we cannot often pre-select a successor and begin to groom them to step into the role. Especially when formal leadership competitions that are free from nepotism or favouritism since you can't really know who will advance into those roles until the selection process is complete.

So how then, do we tackle this to make sure that we have a talented pool of leaders who are ready to assume greater responsibilities should vacancies occur? 

The only reasonable solution is to build the capacity of everyone in the pool of leaders rather than to pre-select and focus on a few. This may seem like a difficult and inefficient approach, but keep in mind, we don't pick our favourite students and only build them up in a class of many, so  we ought to be able to do the same with our teachers and aspiring leaders.

This dilution of focus may be thought to be a negative since the more spread out your efforts, the less attention everyone will get. There are only a finite number of opportunities that not everyone can step into or take advantage of. For example, if an administrator is out for the day, only one staff member can step into the role to cover, so any others interested will have to wait until next time. If you keep rotating, then each person gets a little experience but no one gets a lot and it can be difficult to build on.

But look at the implications of building the capacity of everyone even a little. When you put the time in to build all your potential leaders, then you have a larger leadership pool. Most of the leaders you are growing (if they really are aspiring leaders) are unlikely to simply sit and wait to be put into a higher leadership position before they start putting their capacity to work. Instead, they will continue to rise in their respective positions. You can also work with them as a group and allow them to share their experiences to make the team stronger as a whole. This increases the overall capacity of the school or system. 

The goal then becomes less about trying to pour time and energy into teaching everyone everything, but instead it becomes more about distilling the critical leadership skills and focusing on those since they can then leverage these skills to figure out the rest on their own with less guidance needed as well as strengthening their leadership community so it can be self-sustaining. Identifying strong leaders in the group to help lead the group can also be effective in helping to make it more self-sustaining.

I am a big believer that leadership of an organization is the driving force on whether or not it will be successful. While individuals have a personal responsibility towards improvement, the Leadership has a responsibility to show them what that looks like and to give them the tools to attain it. Leadership is also not limited to formal titles and so enhancing the leadership capacity of all means that it stops being a zero-sum game where there are only a few jobs, and becomes a movement and a general way of doing things. By increasing the capacity of leadership on the systemic level, a positive succession plan becomes almost assured since leadership then depends less on any one strong leader, and more on the strength of the system. 

This is why for Leaders is it critically important to leverage any and all opportunities to increase the leadership capacity within the system, one of the components of the work of leaders after all, is to create more leaders.