Issue: Jack Connors: Managing Succession

In picking his successor as head of ad agency Hill Holliday, founder Jack Connors focused on an insider

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Succession planning is a huge issue for companies. Many don't to it properly, if at all, resulting in disruptive management transitions that are bad for morale and business. In companies where it's approached seriously, it's a preoccupation for both senior management and the board. For Jack Connors, founder and chairman of Boston ad agency Hill Holliday, succession planning was a personal matter.

Connors, who started the business in 1968 with three other partners, built it into one of the country's premier ad agencies and sold it to Interpublic Group (IPG) in 1998, had an opportunity few founders of private companies who sell to large public ones do: He could choose his own successor, according to an agreement he had with the new owners. While his original agreement with Interpublic called for them to pick his successor, when they asked Connors to stay on longer than the five years first called for, he agreed, provided he could manage the succession.

"It was a matter of trust and mutual respect," Connors says of this unusual pact. "They allowed me to choose my successor because they knew the points that we were putting on the board every year in terms of profitability. They had come to trust my judgment."

Connors trusted his own judgment about deciding it was time to go in 2000. "At the risk of putting words in Yogi Berra's mouth, when you sell your company, you don't own it any more, and so, my hunger, my level of interest, began to recede ever so slightly," Connors says. "So gradually, my lack of hunger began to show itself in the lack of growth of the company, and Hill Holiday had always been on a growth track, so it was important to bring in people who could reenergize that growth."

Shared Values

Equally important to Connors was bringing in someone who shared his values: about the work itself, the way both clients and employees were treated, and about the agency's commitment to charity. "In terms of trying to find the next generation of leadership, what I was looking for was someone who shared my values, and I would say what was most important was someone who was committed to the clients, who had the same level of loyalty to those clients and the same level of desire that those clients be made heroes in the eyes of their CEOs."

And he knew he wanted an insider to run the business he only half-jokingly calls his "fifth child."

For Connors, the ideal choice was Mike Sheehan. He was an insider, having served as creative director at Hill Holliday. There was only one problem: Sheehan had left the company in 1999, after being there for five years. Still, Connors, who understatedly describes himself as a "salesman," was confident he could convince Sheehan to take the job. "There was no short list," Connors says. "There was no list, period. Only Mike. There were others who thought they might accede to the throne, but I wanted Mike because of his combination of intellect, sense of humor, talent, but primarily his values as a human being. That's why he stood head and shoulders above anybody."

Connors admits that if Sheehan had said no, he probably would have had to look outside the company for the "the maturity, the wisdom" needed to provide leadership. "It was very atypical of me to consider going outside," Connors says. "I always liked to promote from within. I always felt that a lot of the folks at the big agencies had an enlarged ego and large sense of themselves, and this was never about me or was never about Mike. It was about what was best for all the folks who work for us, all the clients, the community that depended on us for charitable contributions."

His choice of Sheehan, who took over as president in 2001, was affirmed so quickly and completely that Connors accelerated his plans for leaving. "When I encouraged Mike to rejoin Hill Holiday as president of the company, I was chairman and CEO. I told him three years to the day of his coming back I would name him CEO.

Time to Go

"And probably a year into his presidency, I called him into my office and I said, 'Forget the three years.' That was really another reflection of his demonstrated ability but also that it was time for me to exit Stage Left."

Connors stayed on as chairman and now holds the title of chairman emeritus, but as he says: "Chairman is right next to the exit. Once you become chairman, it's almost over. And so I started getting involved a little more deeply in some of the charity work that I do."

For his part, Connors considers the succession, well, a success. "At the end of the day, this is very much a business. It's a for-profit company whose objective is to return money to the shareholders of IPG," he says. "But within that, we always felt an obligation to the people who work here. They've dedicated a piece of their lives to the success of this organization, this particular mission. And so it's not just a matter of paying them, but it's a matter of looking out for them."

That same attitude prevailed with clients as well. "We went deeper than was traditionally allowable on behalf of making things better. That's what we do. And Mike has taken that to an art form," Connors says proudly of his successor.

Patricia O'Connell is Management Editor for BusinessWeek.com.