Timing Your Leave: Succession Planning from the Leader's Perspective

Normally, the issue in succession planning—when a firm even goes through such planning in a sober and serious-minded fashion—is who among the next generation is best prepared and equipped, through both experience and innate constitution, to take over the reins.   But occasionally we get a view of succession planning, as it were, from the other side:  From the perspective of the incumbent leader.

The question on the leader's mind must always be:  How do I know when it's time to go?

Famously, some people are incapable of quitting—or incapable of "staying" quit if they do.  These are usually the unhappiest situations of all.  Days of glory behind them, they become an embarrassment or worse simply by hanging around expecting to continue to be first among equals.  Occasionally, of course, the decision is not in the leader's hands at all:   Disabling accidents, and acquisitions, do happen.

But assuming the leader has the appropriate perspective on his own ego, sometimes the answer is to leave at the top of your game. 

Today's Exhibit A is Peter Cornell, global managing partner of Clifford Chance, the world's largest firm by revenue, who has been in that role since 2001 and involved in CC management for two decades.  He announced the decision to the management committee last Friday and to the rest of the firm by email yesterday.  Although eligible to run for another term when his current one expires next year—and by all external accounts fairly assured of an easy re-election—he opted to stand down because "I have achieved the objectives I set when I took on the role."

And not unambitious objectives they were:  In 2001, CC had just completed its merger with New York's Rogers & Wells, although to call the merger "complete" at that point is reminiscent of calling "major combat operations" in Iraq concluded; a string of high-profile partner defections would follow throughout 2002 and even into 2003.    Second, along with half the Free World, CC  had expanded over-aggressively in Northern California during the dot-com boom.  And last, internal morale among associates was low, pummeled by what they felt were unrealistic billable hour requirements, as memorably disclosed in a leaked memo.

Credit Cornell with taking the bull by the horns.  He moved to New York to focus on righting that important office, leaving his family in Madrid, and with the help of COO David Childs, now thought to be a potential contender to succeed Peter, attacked costs and, as I have long argued, finally addressed the misbegotten partnership compensation structure that had resulted from the Rogers & Wells acquisition (an eat-what-you-kill firm) by, just last week, securing the two-thirds majority of the partnership required to institute a novel version of lockstep.   The new lockstep has three tiers, one ranging from 28 to 70 points [intended for relatively unprofitable jurisdictions], the standard tier running from 40 to 100 points, and the third running up to 120 points, targeted towards the US. 

Most importantly, CC's profits per equity partner are back on the rise, at £691-thousand (US$1.23-million) this year; the firm appears out of the sick room it inhabited for the first few years of this new millenium.

A leader contemplating his legacy could do worse than to take a page from Peter's book.