experience and instituted a more formal succession planning process in
which twice a year all candidates for higher office are reviewed and any
‘‘heirs apparent’’ are given board experience.
David had appointed all the leaders of his cabinet with an eye toward
their executive development and potential, as Jesus had done with the
disciples. It was no accident that this carefully picked group of twelve
men was soon able to develop many times that number of leaders to
spread the message and power of the organization. Once ‘‘the Twelve’’
became ‘‘the Seventy-Two,’’ an inexorable process was set in motion.
And Jesus made sure they had plenty of ‘‘board experience.’’
This ‘‘multiplier effect’’ was used by Ameritech in its ‘‘Each One
Teach One’’ developmental program, which helped it make the transi-
tion from a ‘‘Baby Bell’’ to a diversified high-technology giant. Begin-
ning with its top core of executives (the ‘‘Group of 120’’; seventy-two
wasn’t quite enough), the company launched a process to change the
culture of the remaining 65,000 employees. They brought in 1,000
managers—fifty at a time—for four-day workshops in which the new
mission was communicated. The managers returned to their units to
teach those who worked for them and to initiate projects that opera-
tionalized the new goals and values. The result? A bottom-line im-
provement of $700 million.21
Executive development and succession cannot be left to ‘‘a wing and
a prayer’’; it must be carefully planned. There is no ‘‘leadership engine’’
without a group of ‘‘engineers’’ who build it and keep it on course. As
Federal Express explains:
Our aim is to infuse our managers with the theory and philosophy and
beliefs that the company has held to and practiced and benefited and grown from for over twenty-five years. We want to infuse these ideas into our leaders and have them go out and do the same to their employees. 22
Jay Conger feels that corporate succession planning needs to be more
like the military, where there is a structured and ongoing dedication to
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developing the organization and the individual executives needed to
lead it. For an effective succession vehicle, we might also look to the
people of the Bible. The transition from leader to leader was sometimes
smooth and sometimes rocky, but they managed to find and develop
the right leaders at the right time, keep the organization’s mission and
vitality intact, and keep their ‘‘leadership engine’’ well-oiled and pow-
erful.
LETTING GO/LEAVING A LEGACY
Perhaps the biggest test for leaders is their ability to ‘‘let go,’’ surrendering the reins of power to well-prepared successors. Mature leaders real-
ize when the time is near for them to leave the stage, and they anticipate
this by gradually transferring the trappings and the reality of power to
their prote´geś.
Moses had angered God because he impulsively struck a rock in
anger, and so his departure was hastened and he was not allowed to lead
the Israelites into the Promised Land. Surely this was not an easy hand-
off for Moses, but he handled it in a mature manner. His eyes filled with
tears as he climbed Mount Nebo to view the land he would not enter,
but when he descended, he graciously transferred the mantle of power
to Joshua, neither protesting nor interfering with Joshua’s actions and
staying behind to die in the desert. Before he did so, he blessed the
tribes and he blessed Joshua as well: ‘‘So Joshua . . . was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had lain hands on him. So the Israelites
listened to him and did what the Lord had commanded Moses.’’ (Deut.
34:9)
That’s an example of a clean, smooth transition. But some leaders do
not let go so easily. David Ulrich notes that ‘‘when leaders linger, stay-
ing on boards, keeping offices, consulting . . . very often these well-
intentioned efforts backfire’’ and adds that a CEO should leave with
honor and dignity, transferring ‘‘relationship equity’’ to the new CEO
and ‘‘getting out of his own way . . .’’23 Moses did not stay on Joshua’s
Leadership Development
215
board, nor did David keep his office in the palace when Solomon ac-
ceded to the throne. They got out of the way.
Jack Welch promised, ‘‘The day I go home, I’ll disappear from the
place and the person who comes in will do it their way.’’24 It’s hard
enough following in a giant’s footsteps without having those enormous
shoes still hovering over your head as well.
Ecclesiastes 2:21 reminds us that succession is particularly difficult
when ‘‘a man must leave all . . . to someone who has not worked for
it.’’ That’s why it’s important to give the new leaders developmental
assignments so that they can prove themselves on the battlefield and
earn the right to the position.
But surrender of power can still be difficult for many leaders. Henry
Ford rejected almost every recommendation of his son, Edsel, to the
point where the discouraged Edsel developed a cancerous stomach
ulcer. At Edsel’s funeral, his bitter widow approached her father-in-law
and said, ‘‘You killed my husband.’’ William Paley of CBS fired his
successors, and Peter Grace one-upped Paley by firing his successor
from his deathbed on trumped-up harassment charges.25
As we’ve noted, some of the biblical successions were rancorous, too.
David felt heir-apparent Absalom was too aggressive in pushing for the
throne before David was ready to yield it, resulting in a disastrous civil
war and the death of Absalom. But most of these turbulent transitions
were followed by periods of stability and more orderly transitions. No
one transition was disastrous enough to destroy the organization. That’s
because, when push came to shove, most of these leaders came to care
more about the survival of the larger organization than they did about
their own individual achievements or position.
Top executives (both corporate and biblical) have often been known
for their strong egos, without which ‘‘things don’t get done.’’ But as a
wise leader matures, the drive that pushed him to ‘‘make a name for
himself ’’ by achieving individual feats yields to a concern for ‘‘genera-
tivity’’—the nurturing of the next generation of leaders. Organizational
survival becomes more important than personal achievement and adula-
tion.
When the torch is not passed in an orderly, planned way (or when it
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THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
is passed to persons deliberately selected because they are weaker or less
competent than the current leader), the organization’s continued sur-
vival will be in jeopardy. ‘‘[T]he ultimate test for a leader is not whether he or she makes smart decisions and takes decisive action, but whether
he or she teaches others to be leaders and builds an organization that
can sustain its success even when he or she is not around.’’26 True lead-
ers put ego aside and strive to create successors who go beyond them.
At the end of PepsiCo’s leadership development program, Roger En-
rico asked all the participating executives to envision not how high they
would rise but rather the legacy they would leave at the end of their
careers. For organizations that remain successful over the long-term,
that legacy is often the creation of leaders who surpass their predeces-
sors. The directors of KPMG’s leadership development program felt
they had made a major contribution to the firm because ‘‘when the
time comes to turn over the leadership of the firm, we feel we will have
played an important role in passing the baton to a more capable pair of
hands.’’27
And lest you feel that it would be ‘‘impossible’’ to find a more capa-
ble pair of hands than your own, consider the words of Jesus Christ,
whom many believe to be the very embodiment of perfection. He ex-
pressed supreme confidence in his followers’ ability not just to ‘‘do what
I have been doing’’ but to ‘‘do even greater things than these.’’
BIBLICAL LESSONS ON
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Conscious and conscientious development of competent,
caring leaders is critical to organizational survival.
Your personal legacy will not survive unless you entrust it to a
successor who has been well developed and shares your mission
and business philosophy.
Leadership Development
217
Constantly assess your leadership ‘‘bench strength,’’ because
accidents and unplanned events can deprive you of potential
leaders.
Coaching and mentoring are keys to the development of
tomorrow’s leaders.
Developmental assignments are the best way to prepare a leader
for more responsibility.
Learning by doing (action learning) carries more impact than
verbal transfer of information.
Orderly successions help ensure that an organization will
survive and stay true to its mission; contentious or unplanned
successions can endanger the organization and its mission.
The best leaders ‘‘let go’’ gradually, so that the next generation
of leaders can be developed and eventually take over.
The best leaders subordinate their own egos to the ongoing
success of the organization. They wish and actively plan for
their successors to surpass them.
Notes
CHAPTER 1
1. Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz, The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America (New York: Plume/Penguin, 1994), pp. 226–227.