We tend to admire leaders, and to a degree, rightly so, who managed the following:
1) Had a novel idea
2) Made it happen
3) Made it work long-term
4) established a new trend, practices, and sometimes an industry as a result
5) contributed to the greater good.
Typically, such leaders combine talent and abilities similar to top-level managers. But they also display insane work ethic, complete devotion to the task, and a micro-managerial style, assuming full responsibility for everyone and double-checking everything. As you would expect, finding a successor is often out of the question, and even delegating authority happens as little as possible. Thus, the more legendary the leader, the more of a problem it becomes for their legacy.
Today, with careers spanning decades, and as their physical capacities diminish, some of those leaders choose to ‘shut operations’ and withdraw their offering from the world, thinking their name is synonymous with the product or service.
In a way, it is. But in the larger sense, it shouldn’t.
Although these leaders worked for decades with the absolute best of the younger generations, they remained uninterested in finding a suitable successor, initially grooming him/her through an assistantship role and perhaps eventually trusting the leadership to them. It could be done by choosing the most outstanding emerging assistant, creating groups of assistants who would compete, announcing an open call, or consulting with other experts in their field.
But they didn’t.
Today, two such entities that made history are becoming obsolete, although they had great potential to evolve and continue to serve communities globally. A third one is just going through the moves, pretending it is still around.
The Wikipedia articles and the ‘who’s who’ directories will always include those entities under the name of their founder and leader. I believe it would be better if the founder’s name, along with the names of the successors, were a note within the articles about the organization.
Since even great leaders don’t live forever, acknowledging that their life’s work is so essential it must keep going, and securing the succession so their work continues to evolve and enrich people’s lives could be the final great act of wisdom and generosity.
Or even better, it should be a primary concern from day one.