An Innovative Leadership Succession Plan

Today’s nurse managers (NMs) are challenged to be visionary and innovative leaders who embrace change, manage diverse groups of employees, and address the complex demands of patients and families. Nurse managers need to be educated and knowledgeable on health care reform including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, oversee multimillion dollar budgets, leverage technology, and champion performance improvement (PI). The Institute of Medicine’s landmark report on the Future of Nursing recommended that we must ‘‘prepare and enable nurses to lead change to advance health care,’’ so that nurses can position themselves to lead decision making across all venues, including public, private, and governmental health care agencies. With the increasingly complex and dynamic health care landscape, it is no longer prudent for a novice NM to assume the role with minimal preparation and untested leadership skills. Highly performing nursing departments and health care organizations require competent, engaged, and resourceful leaders, ready to manage and lead the next generation in this time of transformational change. Although ensuring a ‘‘pool’’ of potential NMs is a vital piece of leadership succession planning for any nursing department, formal preparation for the NM position has frequently been overlooked. Nurse manager turnover and vacancies are of increasing concern as managers are promoted, retire, move away, or step down because of the demands of the position and because of strong resistance by staff nurses to assume management positions. In a 2006 workforce survey by the Bernard Hoges Group, 55% of the nurses stating their intention of retiring between 2011 and 2020 were NMs. Shirey calculates that retirement rate would equate to the loss of approximately 67 000 seasoned and high-performing nurse leaders. This is a significant loss to the profession, to their organizations, and within their individual areas of responsibility. Historically, new NMs were provided with guidance from their peers, with the majority of the learning occurring