Train Your Replacement — What Is Your Exit Strategy?
When are you going to be able to enjoy your life away from the workplace?
Are you developing and maturing your team, program, business, or organization to survive after you leave?
When you start working on a new process or a new solution, are you taking that same time to invest in someone that can own that work beside you?
Are you taking the time or effort to transfer your knowledge to the next generation or a peer that is looking to advance their skillsets?
Why are you a slave to your work?
Do you really think that the business cannot run without you at the helm and if that is the case, why is it that way?
Did you not hire the right people around you?
It is possible one of the reasons why is that you have not taken the time to do proper succession planning. You have not taken the time to train your replacement. You have not taken the effort to task or delegate your subordinates or peers to be able to do the work you do, or of the skills that you have when you are no longer there.
You have failed the business.
You have failed the organization.
You have failed yourself.
Early in my career, I was soon to recognize the importance of ensuring that someone else was able to do my job. This was not because I had brilliant foresight. It really was not an altruistic act originally, as it was that I was covering my behind. I was looking for the next opportunity, but I wanted to make sure that the work that I was doing was picked up by somebody else. Most likely a carryover from the military and doing handoffs and pass-downs on work we accomplished each day.
Admittedly, there was a bit of selfishness in my original efforts to train my replacement, I did not want to do my job anymore (read “lazy”). Yet as my career progressed, I realized how important it was to continue to train those around you. To expand the envelope for some of my peers and employees that were not familiar with some of the work that was necessary to keep the business moving forward.
Training your replacement does not have to be hard, it just needs to be thought out as to what activities you can task or delegate to the person you want to hand over the reins to within your team.
When you task someone with a particular effort, that means you still own that effort, the named person is tasked with the effort but you own the output and consequences.
Yet when you delegate a particular action to someone, they are now the primary owners of it. They become the owner, lock, stock, and barrel of that particular action and the consequences behind that activity.
However, it is imperative to recognize that just by tasking or delegating an action to someone does not mean they know what to do or how to do it. Tasking and delegating must come with training. If you have not trained them on how to do that action, you can not wash your hands of those actions until they are able to stand on their own.
Remember the first time you picked up a task that was unfamiliar to you? Your progeny (apprentice, padawan, chosen one, selected, mentee) is now in the same situation that you were the first time you learned something new. You need to train them and help guide them through methods or instructions on how to complete that activity.
If you do not, you fall into the Academic creep trap which can cause the person you chose as a replacement to fail. It is because you assumed they know what you know, that their experience has been your experience. It is human nature. You project your image onto them even though they have never done some of the work or activities that you were trying to get them to own as part of this transfer of power.
In this effort, you also need to pick a timeline that is realistic both for you and for the person that you want to level up. It is not unrealistic, certainly depending upon the complexity of the role, that it will take six months for a particular activity to be understood and mastered by the person you’ve selected to become your replacement.
It may take a year for that person to understand two-thirds of what you do, but is only capable of one-third of what you do. You are probably now thinking, “Oh my gosh, it is going to take me three-years to train my replacement ?!!” Yes, in order to be successful, it is sometimes better to go slow, because slow is smooth and smooth is fast. It will take that long to train your replacement.
So why are you waiting to start training someone to replace you — why not start today? Even when you are put into a new role, or in a new leadership position, you should begin the training for your replacement soon after you start your new role.
You need to have that strategic vision to recognize how important it is to find somebody to be able to step into the breach in case you are unavailable. Maybe you are away or traveling and your team needs someone to help provide guidance — this is that opportunity.
A caveat — even though you train someone, recognize that you may fail in the training of your replacement by telling them exactly, explicitly, what to do to the point of micromanagement of that particular task. Your goal is not to make a mini-me.
Your goal is to find someone that is capable of working the activities that you have delegated to them with more success and greater effectiveness than you were able to accomplish yourself originally.
You can only revel in that success by providing them guidance (the guardrails) and then allowing them to discover that role on their own. Allowing them to wade around in that new knowledge and figure out how to do those activities the way that works best for them is key to build that ownership and understanding of the demands of what you do in your work every day.
Take the time to recognize who you want to take on your mantle and begin training them today.
Go forth and be brilliant.
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