#Continuity May 20

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“A team, business, organization, or non-profit must not forget CONTINUITY has to be part of your strategy”

Reflecting this month on “Life Lessons” I realized how important CONTINUITY is to any team’s vision, plan, or strategy.

If there is one thing that may be hard to measure but certainly exists is the loss of institutional history with any group. Ask any leader if they have encountered a challenge on how to transfer business processes, interpret institutional policies and practices, or understand historical knowledge when a key member of the team is gone. The best leaders plan for succession and don’t let the loss of institutional expertise cripple the team.

I can share two examples were the loss of institutional knowledge severely impacted an organization from moving forward.

The first is about a small company. A friend is part of three person remote consulting practice. Each member of the team has a specific role. One does the sales, the second does the actual work with clients, and the third does billing, payroll, responds to emails, and updates the website. Each member of the team lives in a different state. Well the person with billing, payroll, and website responsibilities became serious ill and fell into a coma. The business stopped billing, the partners didn’t get paid because there was no CONTINUITY. To compound matters the other two did not know how to access emails, business records, or the website. Their clients grew extremely frustrated and they loss new business because they were perceived as non-responsive. It took almost 6 months to sort out the mess.

The second is about a non-profit that had a volunteer associated with the organization for ten years. This person took on tasks that many of us would deem custodial or maintenance oriented. He also performed a number of stewardship acts on behalf of the non-profit. He sent handwritten notes to many sponsors and benefactors. Over ten years if something needed to be cleaned, fixed, or ordered the volunteer took care of it. If someone supported the non-profit the volunteer thanked them. The CEO, the paid staff, and the board were totally unaware of the range of tasks this person did on their behalf. He was a true servant leader. When he left the community the non-profit began to notice a cooling of enthuiasism for many of their fundraisers. They became befuddled on who to call for simple repairs in their building. What had happened was a lack of CONTINUITY from the non-profit. They didn’t know what they didn’t know. When the volunteer left he took his institutional best practices with him.

This “Life Lesson” is simple. Organizations, teams, churches, non-profits, and businesses must have plans in place in order to ensure CONTINUITY. It is amazing the awareness that many leaders have for prevention and security of data, assets, and resources but seem to be cavalier about how to main CONTINUITY as it relates to institutional knowledge and expertise.

The best teams have a CONTINUITY and succession plans. The best teams cross-train so no one person controls the key to the entire organization.