Keeping Things From Descending into Chaos or Apathy

Succession planning can put many of your stakeholders at ease.

Christian Dirce by Henryk Siemiradski, 1897 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons)

Can you imagine living in a time when you had no idea who would become your country’s next leader or when it might happen? This is what it was like during certain periods of the Roman Empire. (No present-day jokes, please.)

Caligula was so insane that he was murdered by the Praetorian Guard in 41 A.D. Then Claudius ushered in 13 years of relatively calm leadership, until he was poisoned by his wife Agrippina (who just happened to be the mother of Nero) in 54.

Nero’s reign ended in 68, but not before he left an overwhelmingly negative impression on the Roman people. Although he was a populist, he was known for tyranny and extravagance, excessively spending publicly and privately.

The historian Tacitus said that the Roman people found him to be compulsive and corrupt. When Rome burned, he seized the opportunity to blame the Christians for the fire, and burned them alive, motivated apparently not by justice but…