What seven Prime Ministers in a decade can teach us about leadership

We've just had our seventh Prime Minister in a decade. Whatever you make of the politics, it's a reminder of something I see constantly in my work with voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations: leadership change is one of the biggest risks any organisation faces, and most don't prepare for it.

At CAP, we've watched plenty of VCSE organisations struggle with a change of leadership. A once-successful organisation loses its CEO and begins a long, slow decline. Or a small organisation takes a great leap forward because a new leader arrives with fresh energy and ideas. The difference between those two outcomes usually isn't luck. It's whether the organisation had anything in place to carry it through the transition.

So how do you limit the risk of damage when leadership changes?

Three things we've used before, and that our clients have genuinely appreciated:

Culture

A strong, effective organisational culture, your way of doing things, can transcend any one leader's personal style and reduce how much depends on a leader making every decision. Work on identifying your organisation's key behaviours, values and commitments, and make sure they're understood beyond the top of the org chart. When culture is clear and shared, a change at the top doesn't mean a change in how things actually get done.

Management tools

Having the right tools in place helps any organisation use its resources, people and otherwise, properly. A strategy, an annual business plan, and individual delivery plans provide the structure and monitoring needed to keep an organisation in control, whether under an established leader or a brand new one. These tools do the steadying work that might otherwise fall entirely on one person's judgement.

Succession planning

Invest time and money in developing a competent second in command, someone ready to step in temporarily or permanently at very short notice. They can maintain culture, use the management tools already in place, and minimise disruption. This is the one organisations put off longest, usually because it feels like planning for a problem that hasn't happened yet. It's exactly the opposite: it's what stops a problem happening in the first place.

Try these three things, and a change in leadership doesn't have to be disastrous for your organisation. It can even be the moment things get better.

If you're thinking about how ready your own organisation is for a leadership transition, whether that's succession planning, building the right management structure, or bringing in interim leadership while you find the right permanent fit, this is exactly the kind of thing I help organisations work through.

There's a free 45-minute advice session in my diary if you'd like to talk it through.

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