How to Survive Your Own Death

Marcus Aurelius. Charlemagne. Suleiman the Magnificent. Peter the Great.

History calls them great, but they all ultimately failed.

Not in the ruling part. The leaving part.

Marcus Aurelius closed out the era of the Five Good Emperors by handing Rome to his son Commodus, who promptly steered the empire into civil war. Peter the Great dragged Russia out of the medieval world, then had a falling out with his own son (AKA murder), and much of what he built started unwinding the day he died. Charlemagne united most of Europe, and within a generation, his heirs had carved it into pieces. And when Muhammad died without naming a successor, his followers split into two factions over who should lead. Fourteen centuries later, the Sunni and the Shia are still at odds.

One could argue that a monarch’s job is not just to wear a crown and sit on a throne, but to create a strong, resilient system that will outlast them.

That’s true of every leader. You will not be at the top forever. And when it’s time to step down, the question is whether the thing you built can stand without you holding it up be it a Kingdom or a small business.

So how do you do it without blowing up everything you worked so hard to build?

For starters, don’t follow what Shakespeare’s King Lear did.

King Lear split his kingdom between his two eldest daughters because they said nice things about him. He judged their fitness to rule by the quality of their flattery, and the moment they had power, they threw him out into the wilderness where he died tragically.

Lear picked successors, but he never tested them. He assumed love would do the work that principles and process were supposed to do. Assumption is not a succession plan.

Steve Jobs went the other way. For years, he groomed Tim Cook and others to take over, giving them increasingly harder tasks to see if they were up for the job. By the time the handoff came, it had already been rehearsed a hundred times.

Most leaders spend their careers nurturing an organization. The best ones spend part of that time nurturing the people who will inherit it.