When the Manager Changes, What Remains?

By Falahemotu Makapatama and Makapatama Founders and Leveki – Guardians and Stewards of Fakafekauaga-Servantship, FakaFekauaga Catalyst (FFC).

Part Three of The High Performing Collective

In Part Two of The High Performing Collective, we ended with a question: when the manager changes, what remains?

It followed from an argument we have been developing across this series. In Beyond Individual Leadership: Developing the Collective through Fakafekauaga, we questioned why organisations continue to concentrate so much of their developmental attention on individual leaders and managers when many of the outcomes they expect those individuals to produce depend upon the collective. In Part One, Fakafekauaga and the High Performing Collective, we explored what it means to make the collective itself a deliberate place of development. Part Two, Where Does the Learning Reside?, brought that proposition into professional learning and development, asking what happens when the people expected to work together have opportunities to learn together.

Throughout these discussions, we have maintained that individual growth matters. People bring different knowledge, skills, experiences, relationships and responsibilities, and their development can deepen what they contribute. Learning also occurs between people as they develop a greater understanding of one another, of the work they undertake and of what they collectively serve. The relationships, knowledge and ways of working developed among people can become part of the collective's capability, rather than remaining dependent upon the continuing presence of particular individuals.

People do not remain in the same organisations, positions or collectives indefinitely. Managers leave, colleagues move on and new people arrive. Sometimes those transitions are planned, while at other times they occur unexpectedly.

Within Fakafekauaga, what remains is inseparable from our responsibilities to those who came before us, those with whom we share the present and those who will follow. What we develop together has consequences beyond our own participation. The relationships we nurture, the knowledge we share and the responsibilities we undertake influence what others will inherit.

The departure of someone important can therefore reveal something about the nature of the development that occurred while people were together, including what was developed among them and what remained concentrated within particular individuals.

Developing the collective

When I reflect on how I learned from my nena, papa and other elders in our village, I recognise that much of what they taught us was not separated into the categories we use in contemporary professional development. Learning occurred through participating within my family, in village life, listening to conversations, observing elders and how responsibilities were undertaken and receiving guidance or correction when it was needed. Some knowledge was shared directly, while other understanding developed through experience and through being part of what people were doing together.

Our elders also recognised that people had different abilities, interests and responsibilities. Individuals could receive particular guidance to sharpen their knowledge and skills, becoming more capable in what they were able to contribute. Someone undertaking a particular responsibility might need preparation that others did not require. Yet the wider understanding of what mattered to the family or village, how people related to one another and what they were responsible for together was also being developed among the people themselves.

These experiences belong to a Niuean way of understanding people, relationships and responsibility. They were not practices designed to satisfy contemporary organisational theories or models of professional development. They were part of how people learned to participate in the life of the village, contribute according to their abilities and understand their responsibilities to others.

It is from within this understanding that we bring Fakafekauaga - Servantship into conversation with contemporary organisations.

We often separate the development of individuals from the development of the groups in which they work, investing in particular people and then expecting their new knowledge or capability to influence everyone else. The individual may benefit considerably, but the collective is left dependent upon what that person remembers, how they interpret the experience and how effectively they translate it into the circumstances of people who were not part of the learning.

Even when that translation is undertaken with considerable skill and good intention, it is not the same as the people themselves having the opportunity to develop understanding together.

Through Fakafekauaga, our interest is in the relationships between the individual, the collective and what they serve. Individuals should continue to grow, deepen their expertise and become more capable in their particular contributions. At the same time, where organisations seek outcomes that depend upon people working together, the development required between those people deserves deliberate attention.

This was central to Part Two. The people expected to work and serve together need opportunities to learn and develop together. Such learning does not require everybody to become alike or to possess identical knowledge. Its value lies partly in people becoming more aware of their differences, understanding how their responsibilities relate and developing the ability to bring their contributions together in service of something they share.

In Fakafekauaga, Matutakiaga draws our attention to interconnectedness and the relationships through which people, responsibilities and systems exist. Within this understanding, Thinking as a System Weaving encourages us to perceive the relationships between different elements and conditions, recognising that what occurs in one part of a system influences what becomes possible elsewhere.

For a collective, this means paying attention to what develops among people as they work, learn and make sense of their responsibilities together. Their growing individual capabilities matter, but so does their ability to understand and draw upon what others bring. The collective becomes more capable through the development of its people and the relationships through which their contributions are connected.

That development has a purpose beyond making the collective more effective. It strengthens the ability of people to fulfil their responsibilities to those they serve, while developing knowledge and relationships that may remain available after their own participation has ended.

The manager's role

Leadership and management remain important functions within organisations. Managers make decisions, coordinate resources, attend to performance, support people and undertake responsibilities that may not belong to others. These functions require particular knowledge, judgement and capability, and the people undertaking them should have opportunities to develop accordingly.

The manager can, however, become the principal person through whom the collective understands its purpose, maintains its relationships, interprets its responsibilities and brings different contributions together.

This can happen even when a manager is highly capable and committed to the people they serve. Their ability to solve problems, maintain relationships and make sense of complex situations may become so central to the work that others increasingly depend upon them to connect everything. Strong results may conceal the extent of that dependency because the arrangement continues to function while the manager remains available.

Yet an organisation can develop a capable manager without necessarily developing a capable collective.

The distinction becomes clearer in how people understand and undertake their work together. A collective whose people understand whom and what they serve, are familiar with one another's responsibilities and have developed relationships through which knowledge and different perspectives can be brought into their work has more to draw upon than the capability of the manager alone.

People are better placed to participate in responding to difficulties, recognise where their contributions connect and bring forward knowledge that may not be immediately visible to those occupying formal positions of authority. The manager continues to make decisions and undertake the responsibilities of their function, but the work of understanding and responding to what the collective serves does not need to depend entirely upon their personal interpretation.

This also creates a stronger foundation for accountability. When people understand the responsibilities of the collective, they have a basis from which to recognise practices that appear inconsistent with what they are there to serve. Their different perspectives and experiences can inform decisions and reveal consequences that might otherwise remain unnoticed. Formal decision making and organisational accountability arrangements continue to apply, while the collective has more knowledge and understanding available through which to participate responsibly.

These are developmental outcomes that matter while the manager is still present. They influence the quality of the work, the relationships among people and their ability to respond together. They also shape what remains available when circumstances change.

What remains?

Managers eventually change. Some retire after many years, others move into different responsibilities, and some depart with little warning. Organisations understandably invest in succession planning, recruitment, handovers and the preparation of people who may undertake important roles in the future.

These activities are necessary, particularly where the departing person possesses specialist knowledge, established relationships or responsibilities that require careful transfer. But succession planning can also reveal how heavily an organisation has relied upon the individual occupying a particular function.

It raises a question that has become central to this final tutala:

What should never have needed to leave with that person in the first place?

If understanding of purpose, important relationships, organisational knowledge and the ability to bring people together have become concentrated around the manager, their departure may remove considerably more than the person occupying the role. The organisation can recruit a replacement, but the collective may still need to reconstruct much of what previously enabled it to function.

The vacancy is visible. What leaves with the person may be less apparent.

Some loss is unavoidable. People develop expertise through years of experience, establish relationships and acquire understanding that cannot simply be transferred through documents or a handover. Their particular contributions matter, and their departure may be deeply felt. The concern is how much of what the collective requires in order to continue has become unnecessarily dependent upon their continuing presence.

Organisational research offers useful perspectives on this question. Walsh and Ungson (1991), in their work on organisational memory, examined how information from an organisation's history may be acquired, retained and retrieved beyond the memory of particular individuals. Lewis (2003), through research on transactive memory systems, explored how groups can make use of differentiated expertise through their understanding of who knows what.

These studies address different aspects of organisational knowledge, but they help illuminate why capability need not depend upon everybody knowing the same things. People can retain their particular expertise while developing a greater understanding of the knowledge available among them and how it can be accessed.

Fakafekauaga brings the question of service into this conversation. Knowing who possesses particular expertise is valuable, but people also need to understand whom that expertise and the different functions of the collective exist to serve. Their relationships and shared understanding influence how that knowledge is brought together responsibly, particularly when circumstances become difficult.

The departure of a manager can also affect relationships and responsibilities beyond the organisation itself. Communities, families, partners and others who depend upon its work may experience the consequences of knowledge or relationships that have become concentrated around one person. When those relationships are understood and maintained more broadly, the collective has a stronger foundation from which to continue fulfilling its responsibilities.

This is where our earlier discussion about the location of learning becomes consequential. When people have developed understanding together, more of what the collective needs may remain accessible through its people and their relationships, even though the manager who previously occupied an important function has departed.

Research into leadership succession has also demonstrated that transitions can affect organisational performance and the people who remain. Rowe et al. (2005), examining leadership succession in professional hockey, found that changes occurring during a season tended to worsen performance, while changes between seasons did not show the same effect. Hendricks et al. (2024), studying work units within a direct sales organisation, found that leader departure was followed by an immediate increase in collective turnover and a deterioration in unit performance over time. These findings arise from particular organisational settings and should not be generalised indiscriminately, but they illustrate why the consequences of departure deserve attention beyond the appointment of a successor.

Our interest through Fakafekauaga is in what organisations choose to develop before such transitions occur.

A manager may leave while the people who remain still understand whom and what they serve, have established relationships with one another and with those who depend upon their work, know something of the responsibilities and capabilities available across the collective, and have experience of working through difficulties together. They will still need to adjust, and the incoming manager will bring knowledge and contributions of their own. But the collective has something upon which it can continue.

Continuity matters here because the responsibility to serve does not necessarily end when the person occupying a particular function departs. The people and communities to whom the collective has responsibilities may still depend upon its knowledge, relationships and ability to act.

What was developed while people were together therefore influences more than the organisation's capacity to manage a transition. It can influence how well the collective continues to fulfil those responsibilities.

When someone else leaves

The question of continuity extends beyond the departure of a manager. Every person within a collective contributes something particular, and their absence can alter how the work is undertaken.

Someone with specialist technical knowledge may leave. A colleague who has maintained important relationships with communities or partners may move on. Another person may have developed considerable experience in helping others understand a complex process or respond to recurring difficulties. Their contribution may not have been fully visible until they are no longer there.

In organisations where people have worked alongside one another without developing much understanding of their different responsibilities, the departure of a colleague can quickly become another problem for the manager to solve. The manager may need to establish what knowledge has been lost, determine which activities require immediate attention, identify who can undertake particular tasks, maintain relationships affected by the departure and organise how the work will continue until additional capability becomes available.

The burden can become considerable, especially when the manager is already responsible for recruitment, performance, resources and the wellbeing of those who remain.

Consider, however, a collective whose people have had opportunities to learn and work together in ways that deepen their understanding of one another's contributions. They may still experience the loss of someone important, and some of that person's expertise may not be immediately available elsewhere. But the people who remain have more understanding with which to respond.

One colleague may know enough about a particular part of the work to undertake it temporarily. Another may have an established relationship that allows an important connection to be maintained. Others may recognise opportunities to adjust their responsibilities or bring forward knowledge and skills that were less visible while the collective was organised differently. Through conversation and shared understanding, they can identify what they are capable of responding to, where additional expertise is genuinely required and what needs to be protected until someone new joins them.

The collective does not become more capable because everybody can do everybody else's job. Its strength lies partly in people understanding their different contributions sufficiently to work out how those contributions can be brought together as circumstances evolve.

This is where the practice of weaving becomes particularly meaningful. Different people bring different knowledge, skills and responsibilities, and the relationships among those contributions influence how the collective responds. When someone leaves, the remaining people may need to reconsider how their contributions connect, which responsibilities can be undertaken differently and where the collective needs additional support. They are responding to a gap in the relationships and capabilities through which their work occurs, rather than simply trying to replace one person with another.

The manager continues to have responsibilities within that response. Some decisions will remain theirs to make, and organisational requirements cannot be set aside simply because the collective has developed greater understanding. But the manager need not become the sole source of the response. People can participate in identifying what is needed and contribute to the collective's ability to continue serving while the vacancy is addressed.

There is also an important consideration here for how we understand high performance. A group may consistently meet its targets while everybody is present, yet remain vulnerable to the departure of particular individuals. Strong results can coexist with fragile relationships, concentrated knowledge and an excessive dependence upon the manager to hold everything together.

Developing the collective cannot remove every vulnerability, and we should not pretend that the loss of a valued person can always be absorbed without difficulty. What it may provide is a stronger foundation from which those who remain can understand the disruption, respond together and continue their responsibilities to the people and communities they serve.

This is a practical consequence of collective development that may receive too little attention when organisations evaluate professional learning primarily through the growth of individual participants.

When someone new arrives

Leadership transitions often place considerable emphasis upon the incoming manager. They are expected to establish relationships, understand the organisation, set direction, build trust and bring people together. All of these may be necessary, but there can be an assumption beneath this approach that the manager is principally responsible for creating the collective they are entering.

Part Two suggested another possibility.

An incoming manager may enter a collective that already understands something of itself, has established relationships among its people, knows whom and what it exists to serve and has developed ways of working through difficulties together. The manager brings their own knowledge, experience and perspective, but they are also entering something that existed before them.

The people already there have knowledge of the work, its history, its relationships and the communities or organisations it serves. They may understand why particular decisions were made, what has been attempted previously and which responsibilities require careful attention. Their understanding is valuable to the incoming manager, just as the manager's experience and perspective may be valuable to them.

The arrival of someone new therefore becomes an opportunity for further development within the collective. The incoming person has something to learn about what already exists, while the people receiving them have an opportunity to understand what that person brings and how their contribution might influence the work.

This applies to any new member, not only a manager. The collective should not expect an incoming person simply to reproduce the contribution of whoever occupied the position before them. They may possess different knowledge, experiences and capabilities that can broaden what becomes possible. At the same time, they benefit from entering relationships through which people can help them understand the work and contribute meaningfully.

There will be things worth retaining and others that need to evolve. The responsibility is not for the incoming person to displace everything that came before, nor for the existing collective to resist anything unfamiliar. Both have something to contribute to the continuing development of what they serve.

Stewardship and continuity

Within Fakafekauaga, Matohiaga draws our attention to ancestry and time, and to the relationships between those who came before us, those living now and those yet to come. Our lives and responsibilities do not begin entirely with us, nor do their consequences end when our own participation comes to a close.

This understanding has particular significance in Niuean family and village life, where knowledge, relationships, land and responsibilities received through earlier generations influence what remains available to those living now and those who will follow.

Organisations operate within different contexts and arrangements, and we should not treat them as interchangeable with Niuean family life. Nevertheless, the responsibility to consider what we have inherited and what our actions will leave behind offers an important perspective on organisational development.

Every person entering an organisation or undertaking a new function encounters something that has already been shaped by others. Relationships have formed, decisions have been made, knowledge has accumulated and particular ways of working have developed over time. Some remain valuable because they continue to serve their purpose, while others may have become less useful as circumstances have evolved.

Stewardship requires us to understand what we have received, while recognising that continuity is not the same as keeping everything unchanged.

Our work in Systems Evolution Weaving explores the relationship between what needs to continue, what needs to evolve and what might need to be released. These considerations are important because organisations and the systems within which they operate do not remain static. New knowledge emerges, communities and their circumstances evolve, and responsibilities may require different responses over time.

The incoming manager has a contribution to make within this evolution, but the collective also has knowledge and understanding that should inform what happens next. Neither should be treated as the sole source of the organisation's future.

Preserving an organisation's existing practices is not necessarily the same as continuing to serve its purpose. A collective may need to question or release practices that no longer serve the people and communities to whom it has responsibilities. What should endure is not simply what has become familiar, but the commitment to understanding and fulfilling those responsibilities as circumstances evolve.

This returns us to the developmental question with which the series began. If organisations concentrate primarily upon developing individual leaders and managers, much of their attention may remain focused upon what those individuals can achieve during their time in a particular function. Yet their tenure will eventually end, just as the participation of every other member of the collective will change over time.

We should therefore be interested in more than the immediate results produced while particular people are present.

A manager may achieve strong outcomes while becoming increasingly indispensable to the way everything works. Another may achieve results while also helping people develop their understanding of one another, deepen important relationships, make knowledge more accessible and become more capable of responding together. Both may appear successful during their tenure, but what remains available to the collective afterwards may be quite different.

The same responsibility belongs among the people who make up the collective. They are participants in its continuing development, with contributions and responsibilities that extend beyond the presence of any particular manager.

Matohiaga asks us to consider the relationship between what we have inherited, how we undertake our responsibilities now and what we are preparing for those who follow. That includes the results we achieve, but also the knowledge, relationships, understanding and conditions through which future people will continue serving.

The high performing collective

We began this series by questioning where organisations place their developmental attention and whether the concentration of investment in individual leaders and managers is sufficient for the collective outcomes they are expected to produce.

Through Fakafekauaga, we have explored a different developmental proposition. The collective itself becomes a deliberate place of learning and development, while individuals continue to grow and sharpen their particular capabilities within it. Their knowledge and contributions remain distinct, but the relationships among them also become a place where understanding, learning and capability can develop.

This has implications for how we understand high performance.

What a collective achieves matters. Organisations have responsibilities, communities have expectations and people need to see meaningful outcomes from the work undertaken together. But performance at a particular moment does not tell us everything about the capability through which those outcomes were produced, or what will remain available when circumstances change.

Nor can performance be considered entirely apart from whom and what the collective exists to serve. Through Fakafekauaga, service is not an additional measure placed alongside organisational outcomes. It is fundamental to how we understand the relationships, responsibilities and purposes that give those outcomes meaning.

A collective may achieve impressive results while depending heavily upon particular individuals. It may also develop relationships, knowledge and shared understanding that allow its people to contribute more fully, respond to difficulties and continue serving as individuals and roles change. These differences matter when considering what organisations are actually developing.

The High Performing Collective, as we have explored it through Fakafekauaga, directs our attention to the people, their different contributions, the relationships through which they work and learn together, and the responsibilities they have towards those they serve. It also extends our consideration of performance beyond the present, towards the capability and conditions being developed for those who will follow.

The departure of a manager or another member of the collective provides one opportunity to reflect upon that development. What knowledge remains accessible? How well do people understand one another's contributions? Can they respond together to the absence of someone important? What does an incoming person encounter, and how capable is the collective of receiving and learning from what they bring?

These questions reveal something about the development that occurred while people were together. They also remind us that the individual remains important. Every person contributes something particular, and their absence may be felt in ways that cannot simply be resolved by redistributing responsibilities.

The person matters and the function matters, but neither should become the collective itself.

The responsibility to serve does not belong exclusively to whoever occupies the management function. It is carried through the people, relationships and responsibilities that make up the collective, even as their particular contributions evolve over time.

This is why the question with which we began is ultimately about more than succession or the departure of a manager. It asks us to consider whether we have deliberately developed the people and relationships upon which collective capability depends, and whether that development enables the collective to continue fulfilling its responsibilities.

When the manager changes, what remains?

What remains depends, in part, upon what we chose to develop while they were there.

Closing the mat

We began The High Performing Collective by laying out a question about what organisations are actually trying to develop. Across these three tutala, we have considered the collective, where its learning resides and what remains as people change.

For now, we roll up the mat and leave one final question with you, your people and the collectives of which you are part:

What are you developing together that will remain for those who follow?

References

In our Niuean oral culture, knowledge has long been gathered through relationship: observing our elders, listening to our matua and tupuna, participating in village life, engaging in talanoa and making meaning from what we experience together.

Fakafekauaga emerges from this living knowledge. It has been shaped through generations of people whose names may never appear in academic references but whose ways of serving, relating, caring, sharing and preparing for those who followed made the philosophy visible in everyday life.

We also acknowledge the many scholars, practitioners and knowledge traditions that continue to challenge individualistic understandings of leadership and management and contribute to thinking about collective, relational, systemic and sustainable forms of human development.

• Hendricks, J. L., Hancock, J., Caldas, M., Ostermeier, K., & Cooper, D. (2024). Moving on: Exploring the implications of leader departure and incoming temporary leaders for collective turnover and unit performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 109(1), 61–76.

  
  

• Lewis, K. (2003). Measuring transactive memory systems in the field: Scale development and validation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(4), 587–604.

  
  

• Rowe, W. G., Cannella, A. A., Jr., Rankin, D., & Gorman, D. (2005). Leader succession and organizational performance: Integrating the common-sense, ritual scapegoating, and vicious-circle succession theories. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(2), 197–219.

  
  

• Walsh, J. P., & Ungson, G. R. (1991). Organizational memory. Academy of Management Review, 16(1), 57–91.