Executive summary: Many university EA groups struggle with leadership succession, often due to failure to anticipate succession needs, overestimation of successor motivation, poor onboarding, and not addressing group-specific bottlenecks.
Key points:
Key failure modes include not being aware of succession as a lengthy issue, starting succession planning too late, picking a successor but not onboarding them well, and not adapting to the group’s specific challenges.
To avoid these, organizers should start succession planning 1-1.5 years before leaving the role, spend time getting to know and motivating potential successors, and discuss the value of community building.
Have an onboarding phase with gradual assignment of responsibilities to the successor, aiming for the senior organizer to be in just an advisory role by their last semester.
Spend lots of time working together with the successor during the handover period to ensure motivation and knowledge transfer.
Resources are available to help, including succession planning mentorship, an onboarding template, and guidance from the Groups Resource Center.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: Many university EA groups struggle with leadership succession, often due to failure to anticipate succession needs, overestimation of successor motivation, poor onboarding, and not addressing group-specific bottlenecks.
Key points:
Key failure modes include not being aware of succession as a lengthy issue, starting succession planning too late, picking a successor but not onboarding them well, and not adapting to the group’s specific challenges.
To avoid these, organizers should start succession planning 1-1.5 years before leaving the role, spend time getting to know and motivating potential successors, and discuss the value of community building.
Have an onboarding phase with gradual assignment of responsibilities to the successor, aiming for the senior organizer to be in just an advisory role by their last semester.
Spend lots of time working together with the successor during the handover period to ensure motivation and knowledge transfer.
Resources are available to help, including succession planning mentorship, an onboarding template, and guidance from the Groups Resource Center.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.