What Happens When the Top Dog Leaves?
Departing employees can have a tremendous impact on an organization if it is not properly prepared and equipped to handle it – especially if the employee is one of the “Top Dogs.”
How the departure affects your productivity
Ready or not, a whirlwind of a ride may await you unless you have done some basic preparation. No matter if you are the receptionist, or the next senior level manager to serve as the interim leader during the transition, you will be affected in some form or another. Your time will be divided exponentially due to the acquisition of new tasks, and the learning curve those tasks will require. In addition, your “usual” activities may get pushed somewhat to the background and can get overlooked if you are not careful.
Projects, tasks, and decisions may proceed more slowly if you are not prepared. So, what can you do to keep moving forward with a full head of steam? Document your responsibilities.
Begin by documenting all that you do, all that you are responsible for prior to the shift, and everything you take on during the transition. Document all of your projects, tasks, and decisions that you are involved with to standardize and organize them.
Once you have accomplished this you will be in a better position to organize and delegate some smaller oriented tasks out to your team. You will also be able to properly communicate expectations and how things are to be handled during the transition. This will also allow you to be able to bring the new “Chief” up to speed more quickly once the vacant role is filled.
How the departure affects general functions and processes
Does your business run on people and anecdotal information? Meaning, do things happen when the “top dog” says it should, and how it should? If so, you may find that company processes, projects, tasks, and management decisions will grind to a halt upon the departure of this person unless you get the processes and projects documented and systematized. When you move in this direction, you will find that you are not completely dependent upon people for the processes and projects to move forward, but more on a system that works and functions nearly independently and therefore managed by its people.
For example, say the departing leader has a specific decision making process proven to be successful (shown below) as to which projects are pursued, and which are not. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know what that process is, and refer to it during the transition? Of course it would. So acquire the information and create easy to understand visuals, like decision trees and flowcharts that serve as reference guides for you to be able to make good consistent decisions and keep progress moving in a forward direction in the same manner prior to the leader’s departure.
Click here to see a larger version of this visual.
The final task is how you communicate this back to your team. The repurposing of projects and tasks can be an emotional proposition for some as time and energy may already have been invested, so you will need to clearly communicate the reasoning behind any changes. The remedy? Share your visuals like the one above so that they understand how specific processes and decisions are made. The more transparent the process and decision making is, the more on board your employees will be about the procedures. Also, you avoid the same previous problem of having only one person with the understanding of the company “knowledge bank” and you forge trust and team communication amongst everyone.
The personnel of the organization are the most impacted when there are departures, and if processes and other pertinent information are stored anecdotally within only a few people then everyone feels the pain – including you. Take the time to document, organize, evaluate and communicate your processes, projects and decisions to keep your organization stable.
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