When a staff member is promoted, the principle will be solidly held that if the post just vacated by him or her goes into Emergency or Danger Condition within 90 days the promotion is to be suspended and the staff member is to resume his or her former post.
It is obvious that a post which is not well organized or is held up by personality alone will slump if changed.
A staff member being promoted may therefore object to the personnel officer concerning a successor he does not believe capable.
The staff member being promoted has a dual responsibility — to learn his new post and to write up his old hat and break in his successor properly.
In expanding organizations our greatest liability is promotion. It is vital and necessary, but it tends to lose lines and leave a messy lower strata in the orgs which can swamp them.
This follows as well Policy on undoing changes which occurred just before a slumped statistic.
The Advisory Council and AdComms must always look at this factor of persons promoted off a post just before a slump as the probable best reason for the slump.
Similarly a person taking over a new post is in a Power Change Condition and must not alter anything or do anything rash until enough time passes for him to appreciate what the new post is all about. Most slumps following after a promotion occur because the new occupant of the old post has either lost the post's lines or has made some brand new order that applies to nothing real. There is no majesty and innocence like ignorance. The first day of a yacht under a new owner is the hardest day of its life as he throws all the bits overboard that propped open the hatches thinking they were kindling wood, tries to hoist the sails with a can opener and runs the engine on the galley fuel.
A staff member is rarely promoted unless his statistic is good. That means the old post he leaves is in good shape. If the old post slumps under a new appointee then that new appointee must have thrown away the lines and ordered the main cabin turned into the sail locker and the engine into the anchor. It will take the old holder of the post weeks to get it running again and he is obviously the only one that can. Further, he goofed in letting an incapable or fast change artist fill his former shoes and he didn't yell when he noticed next day that the keel had been hoisted as the mainsail as soon as he, promoted, left his old post.
New brooms love to sweep clean. Especially the competent orders of old brooms.
Taking over a post in danger or emergency is a feather in one's cap when it rises to normal under new management.
Taking over a post in normal operation and getting it into emergency or danger requires a lot of stupid changes or no work at all and should be the subject of an Ethics hearing.
But also, the old holder of the post must be returned to it regardless of holes left at the top for otherwise a hole exists below and the org will sink into it.
I speak from long, hard experience. Time and again I have had to resume a post I had left because it collapsed. So I have become very careful of who succeeds me on a post. Very careful indeed. And I train them individually and heavily no matter what new post I now hold. The bigger we get the more I get promoted so I have to keep it up.