The Next Transition
Guest Post by Dan Cooper, CEO of Acumen
Acumen was built on and it’s our mission to provide business owners and CEOs a resource to solidify their leadership skills and provide a positive influence on those they lead. We believe doing so will help leaders experience more success both professionally and personally.
At Acumen, our diverse network of business owner teams confidentially share challenges and insights and create lasting bonds with others who “get it.”
The succession plan for Moses was pretty simple.
You stay here, and we’ve got the next guy in line ready to take over as CEO of Israel, Joshua. I often wonder how Joshua felt taking over for Moses. Those had to be huge sandals to fill.
Then I ponder what it was like to be Moses. Forty years of leading his “company” and then one day – poof. The new guy gets the badge, and Moses is retired. Now, God and Moses had an agreement, but I think many entrepreneurs, owners, and executives might feel similar to how I felt when one of my own “end of leadership” came.
You grind hard until the last day, and then hard stop, you’re done. Here’s your badge. Please take your things, and we’ll call you if we need you – which we won’t. So there you are, confused at this feeling of significant loss. Your company was your baby, your life work, your dream realized, your friends and family. No one told me I’d feel like this.
I know that now. It’s because no one talks about it afterward. You are supposed to celebrate like you won, and then act like it.
All ownership and leadership journeys end. All kingdoms end, or you pass them on to others.
For all the resources we have for life’s other transitions: high school, college, marriage, kids, and empty nest. The next phase of life and career has little focus, except for all the commercials preparing us financially to buy a boat and relax and feel secure.
The next transition or career is elusive. We’re supposed to unplug, take a break, retire, travel, and live a life of leisure.
Really?
You made it; stop and sit at home, would ya?
WooHoo!?!?
Yeesh. No thank you. C’mon, there’s only so much golf you can play.
What do you think about the end of your leadership and ownership journey?
How are you preparing for the next transition?
What if it’s the beginning of your next career? How would your prepare now for what is coming next?
This transition will be different than all the others. You have all this fantastic knowledge and experience.
How does God want you to use it?
Whether you have five or fifteen years left until you hit what’s next, do what you have done all your life and prepare for it intentionally. Seek out opportunities that have some teeth, an exchange of expertise, ideas and commerce, and use the talents you have to pass on to others who are learning it for the first time.
Continuing to impact the world will impact you.
Perhaps you just need the right opportunity. Here’s one to consider. Become a Growth Catalyst.
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Acumen ignites a Higher Standard of CEO influence and business impact. Our Impact Platform delivers dynamic resources that sharpen, challenge and inspire your effectiveness as a leader and your organizations overall performance.
When you join Acumen, you’ll be placed on an Acumen Council with other CEOs and owners in non-competing businesses with similar characteristics, revenue, employee count, locations and demographics. This affinity-centric approach combines the benefits of an advisory board and a peer mastermind group and is personally led by an experienced entrepreneur and former CEO who we call a Growth Catalyst.
