Assuring a Healthy Future: Succession Planning at Independent Schools

On Monday, October 6, 2014, Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard, announced that her company would be splitting into two companies and laying off thousands of employees in the process. Speaking to "Fortune" magazine, Whitman underscored that the company's problems over the years relate directly to a lack of succession planning among company leaders. "Succession planning is absolutely essential...," she said. "Over the course of the last 15 years there have been about seven different CEOs [at Hewlett Packard]. This is the fundamental problem: The CEOs had different strategies, different approaches, and the organization sort of went from strategy to strategy." Although this example relates directly to business, it turns out that the issue of succession planning is no less important to independent schools. As Jim McManus, executive director of the California Association of Independent Schools, noted in "Independent School," "unsuccessful leadership transitions, specifically from one headship to the next," is one of the four main causes of school failure. One could argue that the other three causes of school failure mission--fatigue, money trouble, and strategic planning--are related to succession planning as well. In short, the research broadly supports the link between succession planning and institutional health in schools.