Sit down and think through your daily routine, asking yourself serious questions. What goals will you pursue? How will you pursue them? Who will it involve? Where will you go and how often? How will you feel you are making a meaningful impact and leveraging your knowledge and contacts productively?
4. Understand (and plan for) what you will lose. As you plan your transition out of leadership, take stock of all the perks and benefits that come with your current role and consider which ones you need to replace. Bear in mind that this can impact your personal income. Take honest stock of the personal work your administrative team supports today and think through how you will get this work done going forward.
5. Formalize your role. Give yourself a post-work title. That may sound funny or contrived, but it will help you think through the ways you want to describe what it is you do now. You can make this lighthearted if that is in keeping with your personal style: “Retiree in Training” or “Designated Troublemaker” may go on your business card.
6. Practice your pitch. Just as you practiced for countless presentations and speeches in your profession, it can be helpful to practice describing what you do in your post-work life. Ideally, you will have started to envision a role or series of roles for yourself now that you have the new bandwidth to deploy. Think through how you would articulate this to an old friend at a reunion or to a person you meet at a conference.
Successful professionals understand that significant changes require planning. Yet they often fail to understand that what’s true for their companies is also true for themselves. When you consider how long retirement is going to last for many people in developed countries, it is surprising how little planning people typically do for this phase of their lives.
This article is only a brief glimpse of the deep insights provided by CEOs who have successfully managed Transitioning From The Top. It is my hope that sharing their stories can foster empathy and understanding about this aspect of the continuity planning process.
Stephanie Brun de Pontet, Ph.D. is a senior consultant with The Family Business Consulting Group specializing in succession planning.