Clearly, with one eye already on the door and perhaps the next, more lucrative, CEO-ship on the horizon, CEO X isn’t quite the ultra-committed boss they had seemed at first.
Or are they? For Jeffrey Cohn, who came across this anecdote while researching, with co-author Jay Moran, his book on succession planning Why Are We Bad At Picking Good Leaders?, the fact that this boss wanted to address their own succession immediately, was in fact the strongest sign of commitment they could have given. "Some of the board members said ‘this is crazy, you’ve just got this job,’ but the CEO said ‘I just want to set the tone that this company really believes in identifying and developing its leaders’," reports Cohn. "And they were one of the best CEOs I ever met."
For Cohn, and no doubt many others, then, it’s never too early to start thinking about your successor, nor can it be too high up the list of priorities.
And yet, despite how important this seems to be for businesses of any type or size, according to many, succession planning is not something printers are typically very hot on. "I think historically printers haven’t done a lot in terms of succession planning," says Jon Bailey, who, having worked his way from director of digital print at Pro Co, to sales director, to become managing director last month, has first-hand experience of successful succession planning.
"Printers are generally very good at spotting new talent and bringing that into the industry, but in terms of formal succession planning, that doesn’t tend to be a pressure point," he says. "They are so busy innovating and dealing with day-to-day demands that this doesn’t tend to be their main priority."
Simon Moore, managing director at Eclipse Colour and Eclipse 4DM, agrees. He reports that the result is, at best, a boss who has to hang around longer than is ideal, or, in the absolute worst case scenario, a business left without anyone at all at its helm. "If you go too far down the line, then it’s too late and the choices that you should have made earlier on you aren’t able to make anymore," he says. "People end up hanging on in businesses when they should have left sooner. Or there is no business at the end of it."
When it’s time for a leader to step aside and there is no natural successor, a business can of course recruit someone from outside, but Moore says this can be a challenging process. "You need to look at what sort of time it’s going to take to train someone to your way of thinking," he warns.
Cohn is even more sceptical about finding someone to fill a firm’s top spot externally. "There’s a huge risk that the ‘blood type’ of that person won’t fit with the company. That happens over and over," he says.
"There might be a mismatch between them and the underlying culture of an organisation, and that can wreak havoc on a smaller business because, when people leave in a smaller organisation, that’s a big chunk of the workforce."
Multiple choice
The best way of going about things would seem to be, then, keeping an eye out for a rising star already within the company and priming them, through ongoing support and training, for eventually taking over.
Sidney Bobb, chairman at the British Association for Print and Communication (BAPC), says that those currently inhabiting customer-facing positions will be most likely to possess managerial potential. "It sounds obvious, but it will probably be someone who has contact with the outside world, because in order to run a business you’ve got to deal with the outside world," he says. "It will probably be someone in sales or possibly someone in accounts, because they understand the pounds and pence of the business."
Of the qualities that a potentially strong future manager should already show signs of possessing, Cohn adds: "They need good judgement, good business sense, the ability to make decisions and the ability to prioritise. Also important are self-awareness and emotional intelligence, and understanding their own blind spots."
He adds though that a critical element in identifying a future leader is thinking about the future direction of the business. It’s no good the current boss selecting their successor in their own image if the firm’s future needs are likely to be very different from today’s, he explains. "People need to sit down and get a clear understanding of where the business is going to be in a couple of years’ time, and then they can reverse engineer from there to get the right qualities," he says.
But such a process should not be about simply picking a winner to take over 20 years down the line, giving them some management training and then sitting back, Cohn warns. The whole point of starting the process early, he explains, is to capitalise on potential – and so with no guarantees that that potential will eventually deliver the desired results, the best course of action is to identify several talented and ambitious individuals who can be groomed for the senior posts.
"It should be a once-a-year discussion that involves identifying several people who are showing real leadership promise and then discussing how to develop these individuals to get them to the next level," says Cohn.
Of course singling out just a few individuals for special attention may sound ill-advised. Surely, some might point out, this ‘king-maker’ approach risks creating resentment, not only among other staff members, but also potentially between those competing for the top job.
While he concedes that this could be a danger, Cohn says there are ways to ensure that it doesn’t happen. "I wouldn’t advocate a very public process, where there are several candidates jockeying for the top spot," he says. "Rather, you need to frame it in terms of leveraging employees’ skills and maximising their potential within the organisation."
In this way, he explains, a strong management team can be created that satisfies both the ambitions of the company’s high-flyers and ensures that there is an effective structure in place in the short term. "It’s not just about succession planning; the other side of that coin is leadership development," he explains.
Now and then
Eclipse’s Moore agrees that sound succession planning is important, not only in preparing for the future continuance of the business, but in ensuring the company has the kind of strong leadership structure that will ensure its health in the present. "Going forward, we’ve got to make sure we’re not too reliant on any one person," he says of the relatively recent Eclipse Colour and 4DM merger. "We need to work out what gaps we need to plug."
Rigorous and well-thought out succession planning is not just, then, all about ensuring there isn’t a gap left at the top if the current chief unexpectedly steps down. While this is of course an important scenario to plan for, a strong succession plan should also ensure the best person is primed for the job when a planned step-down takes place, and that the business benefits from a strong management team throughout its life.
The lesson to the print boss tempted to keep all knowledge about their business in their own minds and make all key management decisions themselves, is, then, clear: plan now for your own succession to ensure your firm’s continued success not only in the future, but while you’re at the helm too.
CASE STUDY
Jon Bailey, managing director, ProCo
Jon Bailey started off at Sheffield-based direct mail and cross-media marketing provider ProCo 11 years ago as director of digital print. From there he became sales director, graduating to managing director last month.
He says: "With me, being supported to move up the ranks was really a case of being given the freedom to come up with ideas for taking the company forward and being trusted to do that. That’s also important to my own approach to succession planning – people have to feel that they can try new ideas without the fear of retribution if they don’t quite work out. It’s also important that Mark [Schofield] supports me in his new role as chairman and takes a bit of a back seat to let me take the lead.
Important to my own approach is making sure I’m keeping my eye on all areas of the business. I think there is a tendency for people to focus on those on the commercial side of the business and overlook people in more production, operator-type positions. That can be a mistake because those working on the shopfloor are always thinking of ways to improve the company’s offering and so could offer real value to a management role.
Once we’ve spotted that someone has potential, it’s a case of giving them more responsibility and involving them in decision-making. It’s a case of talking to them and finding out what their ambitions are, and making sure they’re given the chance to have their ideas heard."
