Question

Nature Conservancy's leader abruptly steps down.

One morning in October 2007, Steven. J. McCormick the president of the Nature Conservancy, sent an email to its thirty-five hundred workers notifying them that he had resigned from the agency and his leave would begin immediately. McCormick had worked for the organization for thirty five years and had been the president since 2001. In 2006, he earned $375,000. The Nature Conservancy is the largest environmental- conservation charity in the United States and ranked twentieth on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's most recent list of the charities that raise the most money from private sectors.

Stephanie Meeks, the chief operating officer, will work as interim president while the organization searches for a permanent successor. McCormick agreed to work with the organization for the next year as a paid adviser to help it through the transition.

Questions

1. What steps can agencies take to make sure they have a succession plan in place?

2. Do you think it is in the best interest of the Nature Conservancy to have McCormick stay on as a paid adviser to help the agency through the transition? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

1) The situation such as that of the Nature Conservancy's abrupt step down by its President could lead to a greater risk for the organisations if deliberate steps are not taken to back up the significant position with a succession plan in order to prevent set back to the smooth functioning and operations of organisations.

The various steps that agencies or organisations should take in order to make sure they have a succession plan will entail:

First of all for,,, all the significant positions of agencies should be binded with a contract as per which their resignation will be accepted only when they inform it early enough to give time to make some provision or look for replacements which will prevent abrupt step down.

The agencies can also in the span of time prepare and train the subordinate of the President or CEO so as to take the future position in such case through promotion.

The agencies should already look for reputed personnel and sign nay such deal which will let them to have a backup plan in order to prevent abrupt disruption of functioning and decision making.

Since the old employees are the knowledge banks of company and have a lot of data and trade secrets, there should be a contract wherein the resigned personnel has to surrender the knowledge in written form to the new replacement along with training him or her for a period of obe to two weeks so that less interruptions are faced.

Agencies need to constantly know about the feelings, emotions and thoughts of personnel and staff so that they can presumably know what they are up to in the coming future. The commitment and loyalty of management and staff should be constantly looked over.

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2) Yes I think it is very important for Nature Conservancy to have McCormick stay on as a paid adviser to help the agency through the transition because McCormick knows about all the current projects and thus only he can utilise his life long experience and deep understanding of system to ensure that efficient decisions are taken. Since he has been associated with the company for so long, only he can judge and justify why a certain action is needed at a period of time. So with the advise of McCormick the agency can run properly till the agency leads into a proper transition of replacement.

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