Susan Can’t Live Forever: A National Search Is Not a Succession Plan

Every few weeks, it seems like another tourism CEO has announced they’re leaving.

Retiring. New job. New city. New chapter. Spending more time with family. Going to consult. Going to “explore what’s next,” which could mean anything from writing a book to opening a goat farm.

Destinations International counted 18 CEO retirements in just the first three months of this year.

That’s a lot of goat farms. 🐐

And then comes the next post:

The board has launched a national search.

Ah.

Excellent.

The plan.

Just real quick, I have a question that’s going to sound ruder than I mean it:

Did we really not talk about this until right now?

Because people leave jobs. Even really important people. Actually, especially really important people.

And somehow we build enormous destination strategies with five-year visions and visitor forecasts and resident sentiment studies and seventeen pillars and enough KPIs to wallpaper a conference room.

But the leadership section just suggests: Susan.

Susan will do it.

Susan knows everybody. Susan knows why that weird line item is in the budget. Susan remembers what happened with the county in 2017. Susan knows which hotelier absolutely cannot be seated next to which council member. Susan knows why we never use that particular phrase in front of the board chair.

Susan is our institutional memory, political translator, relationship keeper, strategy carrier and emergency contact.

Perfect. What’s the succession plan?

Well, Susan is 63.

So.

I guess Susan lives forever.

Before anybody feels singled out, everybody does this. When Stanford and Heidrick & Struggles surveyed corporate boards, more than half couldn’t name a successor if their CEO left tomorrow.

They spent about two hours a year on the subject.

Two hours, LOL. We spend longer picking lanyards.

This is not just an HR problem.

I know. It sounds like an HR thing. Contracts and search firms and compensation studies and a terrifyingly long job description.

But for a destination organization, leadership is a HUGE part of the destination strategy.

The person you need depends on what the destination needs to do next.

Those are not always the same thing.

Maybe the last CEO was exactly the right person for the last ten years. They built the organization. Repaired relationships. Increased funding. Professionalized the staff. Got everybody to stop throwing chairs at each other.

Beautiful.

But the next ten years may require something completely different.

Maybe tourism grew so fast that resident trust is now the issue. Maybe lodging fundamentally changed. Maybe the organization needs to move from marketing to stewardship. Maybe your funding model is wobbling. Maybe the politics changed.

Maybe your destination went from please come visit us to oh shit, everybody came.

That is a different job.

And yet, when somebody leaves, we pull out their old job description, dust it off, add “innovative thought leader,” and go shopping for another one.

We’re replacing a person instead of identifying an assignment.

That’s backwards.

Before you search, figure out what the hell you need.

Every destination strategy should include one very simple leadership question:

What kind of leadership will this strategy require?

Not who, what.

Organizations and destinations go through seasons. I count four.

1: Sometimes you need continuity. Things are working. The strategy is working. The relationships are healthy. The organization has momentum.

Do not hire somebody who walks in on Tuesday and announces a TRANSFORMATION.

We are not transforming.

Please sit down.

I’m not just being cranky. A 30-year study of CEO handoffs found that new outsiders who rushed big changes early usually made things worse.

Your assignment is to keep the train on the tracks, protect what’s working and keep getting better without setting the furniture on fire.

2: Sometimes you need evolution. The bones are good, but the world changed. The destination grew. Visitors changed. Technology changed. The lodging mix changed. Residents expect more. Stakeholders expect more.

The organization needs to become something slightly different without pretending everything before was stupid.

That takes a leader who can move people forward without making half the room feel like their life’s work just got declared obsolete.

Different skill set.

3: Sometimes you need repair. Trust is broken. Maybe internally. Maybe with the board. Maybe with government, industry or residents.

Everybody knows it.

Nobody puts it in the job description.

Instead we write:

Must possess excellent communication skills.

No.

You need someone who can walk into a room where six people have seventeen years of unresolved beef and somehow get everybody talking about the future again.

Put that in the job description.

4: And sometimes you need reinvention. Not a refresh. Not a new logo. Not “Tourism 2.0.”

The destination has changed enough that the organization needs to rethink what it’s there to do.

That person may look nothing like the person who led before them.

Good.

That might be the point.

And yes, sometimes the answer is already in the building.

We love a national search. There’s something very reassuring about it.

We searched the whole nation.

All of it?

Did we check Delaware?

Meanwhile, there may be someone sitting twelve feet away who has been learning the organization, building relationships, carrying pieces of the strategy, and quietly becoming capable of leading the damn thing.

Have you asked them if they want it? Most boards haven’t.

In that same Stanford survey, 65 percent of companies had never asked their internal candidates whether they even wanted the job.

Internal succession doesn’t mean automatically handing the job to whoever has the next-biggest title.

But if you have no idea whether anyone on your team could someday lead the organization, that’s also information.

What are we developing people for?

Leadership development shouldn’t begin when the CEO announces retirement over dessert at the board retreat. And the CEO shouldn’t be the only person who knows how everything works.

That sounds like a hostage situation.

The strategic plan should survive the person.

We spend a tremendous amount of time talking about where destinations are going.

2030 plans. 2040 plans. Ten-year master plans. Long-range stewardship strategies.

Beautiful.

But somewhere inside those plans should be a brutally practical question:

Who does this strategy require us to become?

As an organization. As a team. And eventually, as leaders.

Because your current CEO might execute the whole thing.

They also might leave next Thursday.

Not because anything terrible happened. Because they got an incredible offer. Because their spouse got transferred. Because they’re exhausted. Because they won the lottery.

Because one morning they woke up and thought, You know what? Goats.

People are allowed to change their lives.

Your destination strategy can’t depend on them not doing it.

So yes, have the national search. Hire the search firm. Interview twelve brilliant people. Fly three of them in and take them to the nice restaurant where everyone pretends not to notice the board chair assessing how they butter their bread.

But before you do any of that, know what you’re actually looking for.

Not:

Who can replace Susan?

Ask:

What does this destination need next, and what kind of leader can get us there?

That’s succession planning.

Everything before that is just an opening.

Because eventually Susan is going to retire. And I hear she’s always wanted goats.