ABSTRACT
Most attempts at succession management fail because they either lack sufficient aspiration or are excessively ambitious. Organisations struggle to make succession a key business driver by restricting its scope to closed discussions about top-level appointments. The best indicator of an effective succession process can be stated easily: the sheer amount of time the CEO and top team direct towards its activities. Implementation therefore requires a CEO and top team who believe succession is an important organisational function, one with substantial business leverage, and who recognise their role in making it happen and allocate the required time to its execution. If succession reviews are to become more than informal, ad-hoc discussions, based on the swapping of corporate yarns and throwaway comments, they need access to high quality and timely information about individuals. At its most fundamental, succession emerges, not from corporate announcements or the appearance of new policies, but from the momentum arising out of day-to-day conversations occurring throughout the organisation.
