NEXT - Succession - The Art of Handing over to the Next Generation

If Jesus Taught At Harvard Business School Podcast

Have you found the time to reflect on the following:

Q1:

The legacy you will leave behind when it is time to depart from this realm called Earth.

Q2:

Upon your departure, who is scheduled to take over the leadership role of the organisation or the family?

Q3:

Do you have a succession plan for the leadership development of the potential successors to facilitate the going concern of the organisation or the family?

When we talk about the going concern – we are referring to the fact that the entity has neither the intention to liquidate or curtail materially the scale of its operations.

As a result, It is therefore important that organizations have a succession management plan in place to choose the leader that will take the organization or family into the next generation.

Myles Munro in a statement he made before he died – he stressed the importance of investment in people over infrastructure – a position echoed by the statement in Proctor and Gamble’s philosophy

'If you leave us our money, our buildings and our brands, but take away our people, the Company will fail. But if you take away our money, our buildings and our brands, but leave us our people, we can rebuild the whole thing in a decade.'

--Richard Deupree, P&G CEO, 1947

A few points before we define what succession entails – no one is ever ready for leadership – it is about preparation – Moses and Jonah both resisted even though God selected them for the tasks – it took preparation – Moses in the wilderness and Jonah in the belly of the Whale to get them ready for the task ahead so we can see that being prepared is essential for companies when it comes to preparing leadership to take over for the next phase of an entity.

This topic is of relevance nowadays when we consider the lack of role models to prepare the younger generations which will eventually lead to a lack of leaders to steer the future.

In this episode we shall be exploring the framework required for an effective succession leadership plan