Author: Rob Meehan

Who is your Successor?

Leaders should be training the people who will replace them.

Leadership development is not a side initiative. It is not something you squeeze in if the calendar opens up. It is the job.

Organizations that treat developing leaders as a core business advantage outperform those that treat it as a “nice to have.” This is especially true when that development intentionally builds a diverse bench of leaders with different backgrounds, perspectives, and operating styles. Homogeneous leadership teams miss risks. Diverse ones surface them earlier.

I’m a big fan of the TV show Succession, but Logan Roy is a perfect example of what not to do. Over four seasons, he dangled succession in front of at least three of his children. What he never did was invest the sustained time and structure required to actually prepare any of them to take over.

For all his brilliance as a self-made billionaire who rose from poverty in Scotland to run a global media empire, he failed at people development. He never built a real successor.

No one gets to the top on their own. And no organization sustains success without leaders who take development seriously.

Too many leaders treat development like filler. “I have a gap on my calendar, who can I mentor today?” That mindset misses the point entirely.

From your first role as a frontline supervisor to CEO of a global enterprise, the responsibility is the same: identify your replacement, invest in them, and grow them until they are ready.

If you are not doing that, you are not fully doing the job.

Look Out for Irving

This story comes from an old This American Life episode.

In 1970, the Vienna Sausage Company of Chicago moved production from its 19th-century factory into a brand-new, state-of-the-art modern plant. They used the same ingredients. The same recipe. And yet the hot dogs did not taste right.

The color was off.
The texture lacked their signature snap.

Maybe the water on the south side of Chicago was different from the north side. Maybe the temperature in the new smokehouse was wrong. The company searched for over a year and a half without finding the cause.

Finally, during a casual conversation over a few beers at a local bar, someone remembered an old employee named Irving.

At the original factory, Irving’s job was to push a wooden cart around the plant, collecting sausages from different workstations. On his way to the smokehouse, he passed through warmer parts of the building, effectively giving the sausages a long pre-heat before smoking.

In the new modern plant, there was no Irving.

The layout was different. That warming step disappeared. The sausages went straight to the smokehouse cold. The result was different flavor and different color.

To fix the problem, the company eventually built an extra room to replicate Irving’s walk. Once the sausages warmed the same way, the product tasted right again.

The original factory and Irving’s walk were the product of evolution.

Many companies, from startups to long-established organizations, develop processes the same way. Incrementally, through feedback and learning over time. The challenge comes when we try to document, improve, or scale those processes.

When mapping out a value stream, the core question is simple. Where is value created, and where is time wasted?

On the surface, Irving’s walk looks like waste. And that is exactly what happened. It was eliminated.

But Irving’s walk was not waste.
It was essential value.

As companies grow and move workflows to new locations, the real challenge is not eliminating steps. It is knowing which steps matter.

So the question for any Lean effort is this:
What other Irvings are lurking out there?

This American Life. “20 Acts in 60 Minutes.” Episode 241, Act Fourteen. Produced by Chicago Public Media. Originally aired January 17, 2003.