The successor to a celebrated predecessor tends to be judged a disappointment, however capable, because the comparison is with a peak.
TV Tropes uses the name for sequels and replacement characters, and sport has the adage that you never want to be the one who follows the legend, only the one who follows the one who followed the legend. Organisations know the same pattern from the successors of long-serving, admired leaders, who inherit expectations set at their predecessor's best.
In practice
- A club replaces a manager who won almost every trophy for twenty years, and his successor is gone within a season.
- A band's second album is called a disappointment by critics who would have praised it as a debut.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is regression to the mean: a legend's record usually includes luck the successor will not repeat. Another is comparison, since the successor is measured against the predecessor's best years rather than an average. A third is that legends leave organisations built around themselves.
- In its favour
- Consistent with regression to the mean and with the familiar difficulties of successors to long-serving leaders in sport, business and politics.
- Against it
- Some successors outperform celebrated predecessors, and the pattern is documented mostly by anecdote rather than by systematic study of successions.
- Standing
- Compare regression to the mean and jumping the shark.
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- Why organisations learn, harden and decline