In Spokane and across the U.S., organizations are experiencing an unusual amount of turnover in leadership positions. 

Some of that can be attributed to a “silver tsunami,” which demographers have been predicting for years and is creating a chasm and shift in the overall leadership landscape that has been counted on for several decades. In some cases, though, leaders simply are leaving not for retirement, but for a change in venue.  

In Spokane, the business community has seen major shifts across many industries, including higher education, health care, and the region’s top publicly traded companies. 

Between the summer of 2020 through 2021, two of the three four-year universities based in the region bid farewell to their long-time presidents with the departures of Whitworth University President Beck Taylor for another job last May and Eastern Washington University President Mary Cullinan’s resignation the previous summer, ahead of her untimely death in December 2020. 

This year, the region’s higher-education sector will lose another longtime leader to retirement when Christine Johnson steps down from her role as chancellor for Community Colleges of Spokane at the end of this year. At the K-12 level, Central Valley School District Superintendent plans to retire at the end of this academic year. 

In health care, two leaders at the region’s largest health care system—and second largest employer overall—have stepped down in less than 12 months.  Peg Currie, chief executive of Providence Sacred Heart, retired in January, and Elaine Couture, regional chief executive for Providence Health and Services for nine years, left in May ‘21.

At the other larger health care provider here, MultiCare Health System, Dr. David O’Brien, chief executive of the MultiCare Inland Northwest region, is leaving for another position within the organization. 

As reported last year in the Journal, five of the seven publicly traded companies changed CEOs — four of them due to retirement since 2019. Clearwater Paper Corp. President and CEO Linda Massman retired in 2019 and was replaced by former senior vice president of consumer goods, Arsen S. Kitch. Avista Corp. also bid farewell to president and CEO Scott L. Morris in October 2019 when he retired after serving for 11 years. 

From 2009 until his retirement in 2019, Philip Mezey served in several leadership roles for Itron Inc., including CEO, president, and chief operating officer. 

Other high-profile departures include Tim Henkel’s retirement from the United Way of Spokane County and Mark Richard’s decision to leave the Downtown Spokane Partnership. 

This impacts Spokane on an economic developmental aspect because when outside companies are looking to bring their business here, some of the things they are analyzing is employee base and availability, where to live and settle, but also the capability to settle in and find those leaders, explains Wade Larson, chief human resources officer for Spokane Valley-based Wagstaff Inc., and who also helps companies plan for succession. 

“Some of the core people that we have relied on as the crucial pillars of our community, they’re retiring. (Former Rosauers Supermarkets CEO) Jeff Philipps is fantastic. He retired. Rosauers has a good succession plan, but that is a rare exception,” he claims.

In a changing leadership landscape, succession planning becomes more important, says Larson. 

He says that while we have known about this impending “Silver Tsunami,” most companies outside of these well-established entities, don’t have succession plans, or a knowledge transfer plan to retain these professionals’ wealth of institutional knowledge. However, the bigger issue is the leadership void in the upper division management core, which he says is the root of an organization.

It has largely been an employer’s market for the past 20 years, Larson says. Most organizations weren’t focused on developing its managers, directors, and other leadership positions because they could always hire someone new.

“They don’t have the core presence to make tough calls or take an entire organization from here to there, let alone bring along core leadership, develop it or get it through a crisis,” he asserts.

When there is a lack in leadership training and succession planning, it impacts the culture of the company, people are run out of the company as soon as they walk in, its clients suffer and the business derails, he asserts.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, 10,000 baby boomers will reach age 65 every day from 2011 to 2030.

The impact of the pandemic has further accelerated retirement, from 2019 to 2020, by 40% according to a separate survey from the Pew Research. 

With this fast pace of boomers leaving their positions, companies are scrambling to find anybody with some leadership basis, he says.

Larson further adds that 25 years ago, it was common for him to train on the balance between leadership principles and tactical management solutions, which focus on how to execute strategy.

The other balance is about building that strategy and developing leaders. He claims that most of the training content he does now is just the “nuts and bolts” of leadership.

“The principles of leadership are not instilled and that’s something we’ve been seeing for the last 25 years,” he claims.

Jennifer Koenig, vice president and branch director for Robert Half staffing company, says she has clients in various types of industries experiencing a void in leadership.

Koenig says she advises companies to have a succession plan and identify who the core people are in the organization that would destabilize operations if something were to happen to them.

“What would we do if we lost them? What are we doing to keep them? Who are we developing to replace them? These are all questions you should be asking about your company,” she says.

On a positive note, she says she has witnessed a lot of retirees staying on as consultants and acting as mentors to their successors.

Financial incentives are one factor that many companies have turned to, especially since the onset of the pandemic, she adds.

“Companies that are savvy about pay are no longer reviewing wages annually, but every six months or even quarterly, depending on the pool of employees,” she says.

While she acknowledges value in scaling a company’s workforce from within, she also believes that companies in Spokane should be attracting talent from outside the community.

“If the Spokane business market wants to continue growing at the pace it has been growing, frankly, we’re going to need to attract outside talent,” she asserts.

Kunal Chopra, CEO of Spokane Valley-based Kaspien Holdings Inc., says the e-commerce company has a succession plan, and he feels confident that if anything were to happen to him, the surrounding leadership team would be able to take care of the company’s needs seamlessly.

“We always knew we wanted to have a plan,” Chopra says. “Every good company should.”

In addition, people who report to him and are a lower level of leadership also have succession plans.

Having a such plans isn’t new for Kaspien, however, with the onset of the pandemic and the great resignation, it has opened a new way of doing things, Chopra asserts.

For example, it has broadened his pool of talent to include remote skilled workers across the country. Kaspien’s vice president of customer experience, for example, works remotely from Atlanta, Georgia. Kaspien has also introduced incentives like offering its employees the opportunity to work from home and a strong benefits plan.

However, Wagstaff’s Larson says that while some major companies do have succession plans, it is less likely for small companies of less than a few hundred people to have one. He adds that, if they did have a succession plan, the pandemic likely threw it off, as many companies downsized and adjusted to a new labor landscape, with some companies losing at least 25% of their workforce.

“A business without a succession plan is always at risk. The past two years were a test, it was a warning shot to say we need to get our house in order,” he claims.