The Succession Conversation Nobody's Having (Part 3): Building Systems That Outlast Personalities

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the importance of succession planning within church ministries. He emphasizes that succession planning is not only crucial for senior pastors but for all staff roles. The episode highlights the risks of having key knowledge and systems residing in the heads of individual staff members, which can lead to disruption when they leave. Todd underscores the need for creating documented, transfer-ready systems to ensure the smooth operation of church functions beyond individual staff tenures.• Church ministries often lack succession planning, leaving gaps when key staff leave.• Succession planning is important for all staff positions, not just senior pastors.• Knowledge and systems often reside in the heads of individual staff members.• Creating documented systems is crucial to ensure continuity.• Churches should build systems that function independently of specific individuals.• Staff transitions are risks that need to be strategically managed.

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Transcript

Succession Means Leading Better

People Versus Systems

Personality-Dependent Drift

Build Transfer-Ready Systems

Document What Actually Breaks

Your Most Competent Are Risks

Weekly Challenge To De-Risk Roles

How Staffing Crises Unfold

Final Takeaways And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Alright, you're back in the board meeting again. We had you sitting in the board meeting yesterday on the podcast, but you're back in the board meeting. Just imagine it, it's six months after your longtime worship pastor left. You just up and left six months ago. Nobody can find the chord chart. Half the volunteer schedule seemingly just disappeared overnight with him. The new person keeps asking, How did Mark handle this? And you realize that your entire worship ministry lived in one guy's head. Does this sound familiar? We're going to talk about that today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffing.com. And thanks so much for joining us today on the podcast. We're talking about succession today. It's a conversation that a lot of church leaders are reluctant to have. A lot of church board members are reluctant to have that as well. And we talked yesterday. It just means doesn't mean that you're actually planning your departure. It means that you're planning on how to lead better. Okay, and we also established yesterday that it's not just for senior pastors. Succession isn't for senior pastors. In this case, as a matter of fact, the worship pastor could have done, the ex-worship pastor, we should say, could have done some real succession work here that would have not only made people talk a lot better about him six months after he left, but also helped the replacement and the church. So the brain drain reality is absolutely true. Most churches accidentally, some on purpose, but most churches accidentally build their ministries around people instead of systems. And here's what I mean by that, because that sounds like, yeah, you of course you should build your ministry around people, and that's absolutely true. But here's what happens when key leaders leave, they take all that institutional, all the knowledge that they had, everything that they did in their role, they take that knowledge out the door with them. And those processes that maybe seemed obvious suddenly become real mysteries. Nobody really quite knows what's going on. And here's what's really happening under the service, the surface. It's really a personality-dependent drift that happens over time. We don't, like I said, I don't think a lot of times it's intentional. But here's how it happens, all right? We hire really capable people and we let them figure it out. And they create these informal systems that work. Okay. Systems work because we told them, go figure this out. We hired you, you're smart, go figure it out. They do, and they create these systems, and the systems work, but the systems work for them. Everything lives in their heads, their relationships, their personal touch, and when they leave, we're starting from scratch. We're starting all over again. Now, listen, this isn't because your staff are hoarders or control freaks, capable people create, naturally create systems. The problem is that we never ask them to document anything about what they built. And this might seem like we're a little off course on succession on our succession conversation, but hang with me here. This is all really important because it does have to do with succession and what's going to happen after you leave. A part of that, part of your leadership and leading really well wherever you are, wherever God has put you right now, is that you need to build transfer-ready systems. Okay? That's where the succession part comes in. Every role needs, I don't know what you want to call it, maybe a knowledge transfer folder. Okay. I'm not talking about just job descriptions. I'm talking about actual kind of process maps, how decisions are made, how you do what you do, who gets contacted, where you keep things, where everything lives. Create systems that assume the next person has not ever done this before. I have to do this all the time in my work at chemistry staffing. And matter of fact, that's one of the things that I've been really concentrating on for the last year is we actually do regular, we talked yesterday about what happens if you get hit by a bus. We've been doing regular training with my operations team of chemistry staffing, some of our operations team trying to get out of my head what only I know, so that if I ever get hit by a bus or some suffer some kind of mental, I hope that doesn't happen, some kind of a medical situation, or I need to take some time off, or I decide I want to take a sabbatical for three months. That that the systems that I've created, and some of those are in my head, are able to be carried out by other people. So create systems that assume the next person has never ever done this before. And the documentation really matters. You can skip the formal policy manual that nobody reads. You got to have that kind of thing, but nobody reads it anyway, if I'm honest. But you really need to document the stuff that breaks when somebody leaves. What are some of those things? So things like vendor contracts, volunteer histories, annual timeline, decision trees, the informal networks that make things actually work. Because here's the church staff reality. Your most competent staff members are probably your biggest succession risks. Okay. And here's why, right? They've solved so many problems informally that replacing them feels almost impossible. This isn't about not trusting people, it's about loving your church's future. So here's the bottom line for today. And again, I realize we're taking succession maybe in a little bit different path than what you thought. And uh but what I wanted to paint here was the picture that it's important not just for senior leaders, but for all staff. Churches that survive leadership transitions don't just hire good people, they build systems that don't require specific people to work. So here's your challenge for this week. I gave you a challenge yesterday. I've got another challenge. You guys are highly competent. So you've already probably finished the challenge they gave you yesterday. So here's a new one. All right. Pick one critical role on your team. One person and say, if this person left tomorrow, what would break? And then you start documenting those gaps. You don't have to have the person do it right now. But don't wait on that resignation letter to figure out what you don't know, because I'm a co-founder of a staffing company. Every day we get we get calls from people p that maybe never thought about contacting a staffing company at eight o'clock in the morning. But at 8 15 in the morning, guess what? Pastor, can I talk to you at your youth pastor? And he's resigning, and then all of a sudden all of a sudden, you're thinking, oh no, now I've gotta I've gotta replace my youth pastor. But you've never had this thought, you've never had this conversation. What if the youth pastor left tomorrow? What would break? What do you need to figure out? That's part of the succession planning. You need to plan for your own succession, but if you lead a team, you also need to even plan behind the scenes for what's going to happen in the event that a staff member leaves. Your church's future should not depend on any one person's memory. That's including you, that's including any staff member. So, as part of succession, both for ourselves and others, we need to build systems that will outlast us and outlast our personalities. I hope this has been helpful to you. We're taking tackling different aspects of succession and succession planning and leadership this week on the podcast. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can reach out to me. Just head over to my website at todd.church. There's a form there you can fill out, uh contact form. Send me any kind of encouragement or were you smoking, Todd? That didn't make any sense to me at all. I love all of your comments. You can reach out to me at todd.church. And check me out also at chemistry staffing. There's any way that we can help you. I've got a team of people that are just incredibly knowledgeable and competent when it comes to church staff, anything, church staff, compensation, hiring, firing. If there's any way that we can help your church, we'd love to be able to do that. Just reach out to me, Todd.church. All right, that's it for tomorrow. Come back for today. Come back tomorrow and we'll talk again about this topic of succession and succession plan.