The Problem with Succession Planning in the Festival Industry

We need to talk about something that's keeping me up at night—and if you're leading a festival or large-scale live event, it should be keeping you up too.

I've spent 36 years producing the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, one of America's most complex cultural events. I've watched this industry evolve, grow, and face challenges that would have seemed unimaginable when I started. But there's one crisis we're not discussing openly enough, and it's arguably the most dangerous uncertainty facing our industry: we have no real succession planning workshops in the music industry to guide legacy and indie organizations.

Let me be clear about what I mean. I'm not talking about the occasional "we need to hire a new operations manager" situation. I'm talking about the systematic failure across the festival industry to prepare the next generation of leaders, transfer decades of institutional knowledge, and create genuine pathways for emerging talent to step into senior production and leadership roles.

And the consequences? They're already here.

The Uncertainty We're Not Monitoring

When we talk about uncertainty in the music industry—and believe me, as someone pursuing an MBA while running a major festival, I've studied plenty of decision-making models—we usually focus on the obvious variables. Will ticket sales hold? What if weather disrupts our load-in? How do we predict consumer preferences in a rapidly changing entertainment landscape?

But here's an uncertainty that most festival leaders aren't systematically monitoring: we don't know which experienced producers and crew members will burn out and leave the industry, when critical skill shortages will cripple our production capabilities, or how rapidly the leadership vacuum will accelerate workforce instability.

This isn't speculation. The research backs up what those of us in the trenches already know. A 2021 study by the Tour Health Research Initiative surveyed 1,154 international touring professionals—both artists and crew members who keep our events running—and found elevated levels of suicidality, clinical depression, stress, anxiety, and burnout (Dobson et al., 2021). These aren't just concerning statistics; they're leading indicators of an industry-wide leadership crisis.

And here's what makes this particularly dangerous from a succession planning perspective: the people carrying the most institutional knowledge, the ones who know how to navigate the impossible logistics of multi-stage festivals, who have vendor relationships built over decades, who can troubleshoot production disasters in real-time—these are often the same people who've been grinding for 20, 30, 40 years without real support systems or clear exit strategies.

My Strategic strength helps me see the patterns here. When I look across the festival landscape, I see a perfect storm: an aging workforce of incredibly skilled producers, a younger generation eager but not being given real leadership opportunities, and a widening gap between the two that's filled with anxiety, resentment, and uncertainty.

The Grip That Won't Loosen

Here's where I need to be honest about something uncomfortable, because my Belief strength demands I speak truth even when it's difficult: senior producers and festival leaders—people like me—are often part of the problem.

I've watched this pattern repeat across our industry. Experienced producers hold tight to decision-making authority. We say we're mentoring the next generation, but we're not creating genuine pathways for them to lead. We talk about succession planning in strategic meetings, but when it comes time to actually hand someone the reins on a critical production element, we hesitate. We rationalize it: "They're not quite ready yet." "This is too important to delegate." "Maybe next year."

And then we wonder why talented people leave.

The uncertainty here is multilayered and insidious. We don't know when a senior producer's reluctance to delegate will finally break a talented team member who's been waiting years—sometimes decades—for real responsibility. We can't predict which critical relationships or vendor connections will disappear when that person finally walks away. We're gambling that we'll magically have time to backfill knowledge gaps before the next production cycle hits.

Chorus America's research on succession planning in performing arts organizations found that "one of the most compelling reasons to make time for succession planning and knowledge transfer is to be able to reduce the risk of disruption to your operations" (Chorus America, n.d.). But here's what they also documented: changes among long-term staff, particularly at organizations with smaller teams, can be traumatic for those who remain.

I've seen this trauma firsthand. When a veteran producer leaves—whether through retirement, burnout, or just finally giving up on ever advancing—the ripple effects are devastating. Remaining team members scramble to cover knowledge gaps. Passive-aggressive tensions that were simmering for years suddenly boil over. Younger staff members who thought they'd finally get their shot instead watch the organization hire an expensive outside consultant or promote someone's nephew who has "potential."

My Responsibility strength makes me acutely aware of the weight we're placing on the next generation when we fail to prepare them properly. We're not just creating operational risk; we're creating human casualties.

Why This Is Actually About Uncertainty

Traditional succession planning advice talks about "identifying high-potential employees" and "creating development programs." That's all fine, but it misses the core issue in live events: the nature of our work makes succession planning incredibly difficult, and that difficulty doesn't excuse us from doing it—it makes it more urgent.

Festivals operate in environments of massive uncertainty. We're coordinating hundreds of moving parts, managing complex stakeholder relationships, making real-time decisions with incomplete information, and doing it all under intense time pressure. The people who excel in this environment develop what I call "pattern recognition wisdom"—an intuitive understanding of how systems work, where failures will cascade, and how to navigate political and logistical complexity simultaneously.

This wisdom isn't in any manual. It's built through lived experience, mistakes survived, and relationships cultivated over years.

And here's the succession planning crisis: we haven't built systems to transfer this wisdom systematically. We haven't created structures that allow emerging leaders to make real decisions, experience real consequences, and develop their own pattern recognition while senior producers are still around to provide context and support.

Research on knowledge transfer in succession planning found that lack of proper knowledge transfer costs large U.S. businesses up to $265 million annually (Academy to Innovate HR, 2025). But in the festival industry, the cost isn't just financial—it's cultural, relational, and operational in ways that are hard to quantify.

When we lose a senior producer without proper knowledge transfer, we lose:

Decades of vendor relationships and negotiation history
Understanding of why certain systems exist (and which ones can be changed)
Institutional memory of past failures and near-misses
Political intelligence about stakeholder dynamics
Crisis management instincts that only come from experience

My Learner strength makes me constantly curious about how we could do this better. What if we treated succession planning not as an event ("Jane is retiring, we need to find her replacement") but as an ongoing practice embedded in how we operate?

Building Flexibility Into How We Lead

The second half of managing uncertainty is building in flexibility and contingency planning. In traditional business contexts, this might mean having backup suppliers or financial reserves. In festival leadership succession, it means something different and more difficult: it means senior leaders have to loosen their grip now, even when it feels uncomfortable and risky.

This is where my Positivity strength helps me see possibilities rather than just problems. Yes, delegating real authority to less experienced leaders feels scary. Yes, they'll make mistakes. Yes, some things might not be executed exactly how you would have done them.

But here's what I've learned through my own journey of building The Leadership House while maintaining my executive role: the only way to develop leaders is to let them lead.

What does this actually look like in practice?

It means building buffer into production timelines specifically to accommodate learning curves. When I mentor emerging producers, I don't give them responsibility for our tightest, highest-stakes timelines. I find areas where we can extend deadlines, where mistakes won't cascade catastrophically, where they can experiment and learn.

It means documenting processes and relationships in ways that transfer knowledge. I've started requiring my team to create decision logs—not just what we decided, but why, what we considered, what we were worried about. These become teaching tools for the next generation.

It means having honest conversations about transition timelines. I'm planning to transition from my executive role by 2032. That's not a secret I'm holding close to my chest—it's something I talk about openly with my team. That transparency allows us to build real succession plans with actual timelines and development milestones.

It means creating psychological safety for emerging leaders to voice concerns and challenge assumptions. The passive-aggressive tension I mentioned earlier? It often comes from environments where people can't speak truth to power, where questioning a senior leader's decision is seen as insubordination rather than critical thinking.

My Positivity also reminds me that this isn't just about risk mitigation—it's about possibility. When we develop the next generation properly, they don't just replicate what we've done; they innovate. They bring fresh perspectives, new relationships, different approaches to old problems.

What Succession Planning Actually Requires

Based on my experience both leading festival operations and studying organizational leadership formally, here's what real succession planning in the festival industry requires:

1. Acknowledging the urgency. We can't keep kicking this can down the road. The research on mental health in touring and live events tells us that burnout and attrition are accelerating. We don't have 10 years to figure this out.

2. Creating genuine leadership opportunities with consequences. Not "leadership development programs" where emerging producers attend workshops. Real projects with real budgets, real stakeholder relationships, and real accountability. Let them make decisions. Let them experience consequences. Be there to debrief and support, but don't rescue them from every mistake.

3. Documenting institutional knowledge systematically. This should be part of every major project debrief. What worked? What didn't? What would we do differently? Why do we do it this way? Who are the key relationships, and how were they built?

4. Building mentorship into performance expectations for senior leaders. Knowledge transfer shouldn't be optional or something people do "when they have time." It should be a core responsibility of senior positions, with clear expectations and accountability.

5. Having the hard conversations about ego and legacy. Sometimes the barrier to succession planning is practical—we're too busy, systems are too complex. But often, the real barrier is psychological. Senior leaders struggle to see beyond their own tenure. We've tied our identity to being indispensable. We need to have honest conversations about what legacy actually means.

My Belief strength centers on integrity and making a positive impact that extends beyond my own career. The legacy I want isn't "EJ made Jazz Fest run perfectly for 40 years." It's "EJ developed the leaders who will make Jazz Fest thrive for the next 40 years."

The Festivals That Will Survive

Here's my prediction, informed by both my Strategic thinking and my formal business education: the festivals that will still be producing events in 10 years are the ones making succession planning a priority now.

Not someday. Not when the founder finally retires. Not when someone has a health crisis that forces the issue. Now.

These festivals will:

Systematically monitor workforce stability and leadership pipeline health
Build knowledge transfer into their operational rhythm, not treat it as a special project
Create real pathways for emerging talent to develop pattern recognition wisdom
Accept that letting go of control is necessary for organizational sustainability
Document institutional knowledge in ways that make it transferable

The research is clear on what happens when we don't do this work. Chorus America found that poor succession planning leads to trauma for remaining staff, loss of critical relationships, and operational disruption. The AIHR research quantifies the financial costs. The Tour Health Research Initiative documents the mental health crisis that makes this all more urgent.

But beyond the research, I know this from lived experience: betting your entire operation on one person's willingness and ability to keep showing up indefinitely is the riskiest uncertainty of all.

An Invitation to Fellow Leaders

If you're reading this and feeling defensive—if your first thought is "but my situation is different" or "they're not ready yet"—I want to challenge you to sit with that discomfort. My Responsibility strength makes me feel a deep obligation to name hard truths, even when they implicate my own leadership.

We are running out of time. The next generation of festival leaders is watching us, waiting for genuine opportunities, and increasingly deciding that waiting isn't worth it. The institutional knowledge we're carrying is only valuable if it gets transferred before we burn out, retire, or move on.

And here's the thing my Learner strength has taught me through my MBA studies and my decades in this industry: uncertainty isn't something we can eliminate. But we can choose which uncertainties we actively manage and which ones we gamble on.

Right now, most of the festival industry is gambling on succession. We're hoping experienced producers will stay healthy, stay engaged, and somehow magically transfer their knowledge at the perfect moment. We're hoping talented emerging leaders will wait patiently for their chance rather than taking their skills to industries that invest in developing them.

That's not a strategy. That's a prayer.

My Strategic thinking tells me we can do better. My Positivity tells me the next generation is capable of incredible things if we give them real opportunities. My Belief demands I speak this truth even when it's uncomfortable.

The problem with succession planning in the festival industry is that we're not treating it with the urgency it deserves. We're not building the systems, creating the opportunities, or having the honest conversations that would prepare the next generation to lead.

But we could. Starting now.

What if the legacy we leave isn't just the festivals we produced, but the leaders we developed? What if we measured our success not just by how smoothly this year's event ran, but by how prepared the next generation is to lead the next 10 years of events?

That's the succession planning challenge I'm taking on in my own career as I build The Leadership House and plan my transition from executive operations. And that's the challenge I'm inviting you—my fellow festival leaders—to embrace.

Because the festivals that will thrive in the future won't be the ones led by indispensable individuals holding all the knowledge. They'll be the ones that built systems to develop leaders, transfer wisdom, and create genuine succession pathways.

The uncertainty isn't whether change is coming. Change is already here. The uncertainty is whether we'll plan for it or be surprised by it.

I know which option my Strategic strength prefers. How about you?

Leadership Development, Team ManagementEugenie EncalardeJanuary 13, 2026