Be Kind to Your Successors

Let’s talk about big decisions and long-term consequences.

I am going back to a discussion I had with a friend a couple of years ago. He serves as an Executive Financial Administrator at a large, well-known church in the south. He was telling me how, on a daily basis, he wrestles with decisions that leaders of the church made forty years ago. I was blown away by that idea. Specifically, he was trying to pay for and maintain buildings that never should have been built. It was currently hamstringing their ministry. They were having trouble fulfilling their God-given vision because they had to manage the choices made by guys who were no longer around.

Be reminded that, some of the things you decide today will be around for a long time. Long after you are dead and buried, some of your choices will still be going strong.  Before you decide to commit an organization to a long-term arrangement, consider those who will follow you. Before you jump on a bandwagon, before you follow a trend, before you do what other well-known leaders are doing, ask… how will this affect people who come along behind me in 10 or 20 or 30 years?

Go ahead and dream big, and act big. But do so with the knowledge that someone gets to deal with the residual of your decisions.

Be kind to your successors! They will love you for it.

(by the way, I took the picture above while on a bike ride in the swamp in South Florida)