Succession planning is simply put the planning of who is to replace a leader or key person once that person is gone. In many public and official roles, succession planning is written into the ‘law’ or into core procedure. Royalty have a defined process to appoint a replacement, politics has its own process … In business we too need to succession plan to ensure continuity and longevity of the business.
The most common approach to succession planning is when looking inside an organisation in order to ensure that there are upcoming leaders to replace the current ones. This replacement strategy is not there in order to get rid or current leaders but in order to ensure that the current leaders can grow further into larger, more interesting and more valuable roles. In this aspect to succession planning, CMG Consulta gets into the business, the organisation sturcture, culture and strategy in order to ensure that these leadership paths are clear, defined and easily accessible to those who qualify. It involves working closely with senior management in order to ensure that an organisation is able to plan this and end up in a self-sufficient and self-sustaining state looking ahead.Another aspect to succession planning is when owner-managed businesses are involved. In these type of businesses, the fact that the owner is also the person leading the business tends to create an added layer of ‘complexity‘ in that it makes it more difficult for the owner to look at growing an ‘outsider‘ to manage the business. It also typically means that the owner/manager tends to have a high degree of emotional attachment to the business making such discussions more complicated. Having said all this, CMG Consulta typically get into deep and frank discussions with the owner manager in order to empower the person to make this change and start the process of planning a success that handles the family/ownership aspects as well as the business/management aspects in parallel. These succession planning aspects tend to be more challenging due to their delicate discussions and negotiations yet they are extremely rewarding when we are able to eventually work towards managing the change and reaching new horizons with the owner.
