Target's CEO Succession: When Planning Meets Reality
The tricky truth about promoting from within when your strategy is failing
Brian Cornell is stepping down after 11 years as Target CEO, and Target's board is promoting COO Michael Fiddelke to take the helm. On paper, this looks textbook: long tenure, planned transition, internal candidate with deep organizational knowledge.
But here's the uncomfortable question nobody's asking: Should the person who helped create the strategy that's failing be the one to fix it?
The Planning vs. Performance Paradox
Let's give Target credit where it's due. This wasn't a crisis-driven resignation or a board coup. Cornell announced his departure as part of a planned succession process, giving the organization stability and time for transition. That's exactly what good governance looks like.
But—and this is a big but—Target has been hemorrhaging market share to Walmart, Amazon, and Costco for years. Their strategic missteps aren't recent hiccups; they're systemic issues that have been building throughout Cornell's tenure. And Fiddelke, as COO, wasn't just watching from the sidelines. He was part of the leadership team making those strategic decisions.
So Target's board faced a classic succession dilemma: promote the internal candidate who knows the organization inside and out, or acknowledge that fresh thinking might require fresh leadership.
They chose continuity over disruption. Whether that's wise remains to be seen.
What Nonprofits Get Wrong About Internal Succession
This tension between familiarity and fresh perspective is one nonprofits face constantly, and most boards handle it poorly. They either assume internal candidates can't provide new vision (wrong) or assume that organizational knowledge automatically translates to successful leadership (also wrong).
The truth is more nuanced. Internal promotion can absolutely drive innovation—but only when boards and leaders honestly assess whether the existing leadership team has the capacity for strategic pivot.
Ask yourself: Is your Deputy Director or COO advocating for different approaches that current leadership is rejecting? Or are they fully bought into the current strategy that may be failing?
Target's board bet that Fiddelke could lead differently as CEO than he operated as COO. That's possible—authority changes perspective. But it's also a gamble that many nonprofit boards aren't honest enough to evaluate properly.
The Questions Your Board Should Be Asking
If you're facing succession planning—whether planned or forced—Target's situation offers a framework for the conversations you need to have:
Strategic Assessment First: Before evaluating candidates, honestly assess your current strategy. Are you achieving your mission effectively? Are you keeping pace with peer organizations? Are donors and stakeholders confident in your direction? If the answer is no, that changes your succession criteria.
Internal Candidate Evaluation: Don't just ask whether your internal candidates can do the job. Ask whether they're capable of doing the job differently. What evidence do you have that they'd change course rather than double down on current approaches?
Vision vs. Operations: Strong operational leaders don't automatically become strong visionary leaders. Fiddelke excelled at execution as COO, but CEO success requires strategic thinking, external relationship building, and organizational transformation. Different skill sets entirely.
Board Accountability: Target's board essentially decided their current strategy could work with better execution. Maybe they're right. But if they're wrong, they own that failure. Your board needs the same accountability mindset.
Why Nonprofits Can't Afford Corporate-Style Gambling
Here's where the corporate-nonprofit divide matters. Target's shareholders can absorb a few more years of market share decline while Fiddelke proves himself. Your donors and beneficiaries can't.
When your food bank is losing ground to other service providers, when your scholarship recipients aren't succeeding at the rates they should, when your arts programming isn't engaging communities effectively—you don't have three years to see if internal promotion works out.
Nonprofit succession planning requires more honesty about organizational performance and leadership capacity than most boards are comfortable with. But that discomfort is exactly why you need external perspectives during succession processes.
The Lessons for Your Next Transition
Target's succession offers three critical insights for nonprofit boards:
Planning Beats Crisis, But Planning Isn't Enough: Having a succession process is essential. Having the courage to acknowledge when that process needs to challenge existing leadership approaches is what separates good governance from board theater.
Internal Knowledge Has Value, But Fresh Perspective Has Greater Value: Organizational history matters, but mission impact matters more. If your internal candidates can't articulate how they'd lead differently to achieve better outcomes, you're not promoting leadership—you're promoting continuity.
Timing Your Transition Around Performance, Not Convenience: Cornell's departure timing allowed for planned transition but ignored Target's competitive position. Don't let calendar considerations override strategic ones.
Fiddelke might prove that internal candidates can drive transformation. Or Target might spend the next few years learning that promoting execution experts into strategic roles without evidence of strategic capability is expensive mistake.
Your nonprofit doesn't have Target's luxury of learning from expensive mistakes. Plan your succession like mission impact depends on it—because it does.
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