It is athletes and perhaps actors or singers who have a problem of stepping down at the right time. Are they past their prime and ready to step down? Is a rematch really what the public is clamoring for? Does the new champ need to prove that his victory was not a fluke or a case of biased judging?
Stepping down after being replaced can be a traumatic experience. It needs to be viewed in a more pedestrian light.
In North America, for example, retailers can be overly accommodating in providing refund or credit card reversals for bought goods returned to the store (the color does not suit me). A shopper then can buy a tuxedo on credit for an occasion and then return it for a refund the following week. In the consumer culture of retailers there, the sales clerks are not allowed to pose snippy questions to the shopper — the tux seems sweaty in the armpits, Sir. However, they probably keep a black list of habitual offenders. (Sir, we don’t have your size. Try a rental.)
Is there an optimum time for discarding and replacing?
Replacement has at least two possible but opposite meanings. One is to return something like replacing a file back to its folder. Or, as in common usage, it can mean putting something or someone in place of or as a substitute for another. An incumbent occupying a position may be replaced by another without much warning, implemented by an e-mail announcement.
Replacements are often done only when needed. If something no longer works, it is replaced. This goes for gadgets, light bulbs, corporate structures, and advisory councils. In a disposable society where repairs no longer seem to be a viable option, and a device is dropped, bumped, or spilled with coffee and no longer works, it is simply discarded and replaced with a new one. As in replaced partnerships, only the memory is transferred, sometimes unwillingly.
Planned obsolescence is a marketing strategy. This supply concept of intentional replacement is pushed by the demand side of feeling discontent with an old model when a new version is available. Upgrades of machines and gadgets are sometimes withheld in order to spawn a new wave of longing for the latest number in the series, as if the appearance of the new model automatically renders the existing, but still serviceable, possession no longer desirable. Gadget envy has replaced the other kind.
Replacement is usually a zero sum game. One is required to give up one thing to acquire another. Often it can even be a “negative sum” option. A redundancy program, or downsizing, is intended to reduce headcount without any replacement. Thus, one who is “redundated” is by definition un-replaced, which is quite different from being irreplaceable. The negative sum game ends up with fewer employees than before. Boxes are collapsed along with their inhabitants.
Personal relationships also offer replacement options. When a relationship ends, either from the death of a partner or her straying away, a replacement, though not necessarily right away, is considered one option for moving on. Sometimes too, those who find themselves in a higher social position conclude that they need a more presentable, usually much younger, partner for their new milieu. Another ground for discarding and replacement may be incompatibility in reading auras — he thinks aura is just a mall.
Politicians are discarded in a predictable cycle of elections. Those in appointive positions are easily replaced by a new regime. Even positions with fixed terms need to have their incumbents decide whether to step down ahead as a courtesy or to escape controversy.
In top jobs there are such valuable players prized for their contribution and seemingly irreplaceable, without any possible successor, sometimes intentionally avoiding the search for one. When is it time to discard and replace? This decision is not always in the hands of the incumbent. And when a decision is made, there is always a period when the question is asked — did we discard too soon? Is the replacement an improvement over the discard?
It is no wonder that successors try to look good by upending the legacy of the one who came before. The replacement, as in the case of gadgets, should have more features… even when these are not even necessary.
A. R. Samson is chair and CEO of Touch DDB.
