Nobody Warns You About the Loneliness of Going Second

We spend a lot of energy in #AEC firms celebrating founders.

The risk they took. The firm they built. The culture they shaped. And rightly so.

If I am being honest, in my experience and what I have seen elsewhere, we spend almost none preparing the person who comes next. 

I have watched a lot of successors step into the top seat in employee-owned firms. From the outside it looks like an arrival. From the inside it is often a quiet kind of lonely.

Because the successor inherits everything except the mythology.

They inherit the expectations the founder set.

The relationships the founder built.

The decisions the founder gets remembered for.

But they do not inherit the trust that founder earned over decades.

They have to build that themselves while leading the firm forward.  This is perhaps the greatest lesson being "the next up" and I certainly learned it the hard way after following iconic founders. 

And, as a new CEO, stepping into huge shoes, here is the part that often goes unsaid.

The founder is frequently still there.

On the board.

In the hallway.

In the stories people tell.

Sometimes offering support.

Sometimes offering advice.

Sometimes being an armchair Quarter Back. 

Always present in the firm’s collective memory.

That is a hard place to lead from for new leaders. The successors who do it well are not the ones who imitate the founder. They are the ones secure enough to lead differently and patient enough to let the firm catch up to them.

Over time, they stop trying to fill someone else’s shoes and start building their own approach and means to contribute.

If you are carrying that chair right now, the challenge is not a sign you are failing. It is often the reality of going second.

I would value hearing from others who have lived this transition, on either side of it.