Written by Alan Froggatt, Holtby Turner
If the first casualty of war is the truth, surely the first casualty of succession is often strategy? As succession planning is often disconnected from the greater strategic picture, I’ve time and time again seen how the latter is killed by the former, and having spent the last three decades as a senior executive, a CEO at CBRE and now an real estate management consultant, I have three principal, if somewhat sceptical, observations on how this works in practice.
First, succession planning is assigned to the HR department, as there are always more important things to do. If and when they can find some senior management time, they produce a table of options which is designed not to offend anyone important.
Second, an apparently strong leader still harbours human insecurities and prefers not to be too explicit about succession in case it comes along rather too quickly for his or her own comfort.
Third, strong leaders are sometimes so committed to ‘their way’ that they burn off potential challengers who, even with the right qualities, will have inconvenient ideas of their own.
Succession planning at the top level is so vital that as a leader you haven’t completed your job if you’ve not left the board and stakeholders with what and who they need to execute on strategic plans. Recently, I talked about this with Toby Turner, who’s the Managing Director of Holtby Turner Executive Search and knows all about this. He emphasised how successful companies in the property business tend to be the ones that constantly review the strength of their executive team and who pro-actively recruit at a very senior level. He also emphasised that a CEO is in fact protected by having a group of strong candidates for the top job, as it’s healthy to keep an obvious candidate guessing rather than being complacent, or worse, clumsily attempting a premature coup.
For strategy is more than good planning – it’s about identifying individuals whose approach is sufficiently agile, who can adapt with the strategy, and who have some of that elusive quality, namely vision – that keeps property businesses evolving. In the midst of our invigorated and confident market, thinking strategically and creatively about who will be leading your organisation in the next 5 years is critical to sustainable success.
So if a company’s share value and market strength effectively sits with whoever is leading change and putting strategy into practice, why do so many in the property and construction sector overlook succession planning? Promoting the wrong people destabilises business performance, reduces the morale of existing teams, and can incur hefty ‘remedial’ recruitment costs. Don’t let the great work you’ve done be un-done by the wrong successor!
Sure, sometimes an external hire is needed, particularly when your business expands into new markets or new technical areas. However, in the majority of cases that I’ve seen, developing great performers and promoting rising stars internally ensures that a business will continue to thrive. But how does one do it?
When assessing your company’s talent, it’s important to look at their personality, their drivers and their motivation. Someone who is an excellent performer in their current role may not have the right management experience to deliver on strategy at the next level. Being able to make objective assessments of your people’s skills, experience, personality traits and mental horsepower is critical here. You need to measure their potential, not just their performance. Your company must not be scared of using objective measurements on even very senior people – solid data should be part of your company’s culture.
Skills and experience are easy to determine, but personality and mental agility can also be objectively measured, e.g. by personality profiling. Such assessments give great insight into people’s motivation, management and leadership style, and their determination and drive. Intelligence assessments also reveal how quickly the individual could adapt to new situations – a vital characteristic for successful strategy in a changing environment.
What we in the real estate industry need to become better at doing is asking the following questions, time and time again:
Do we, as a company, have the talent needed to execute on our strategy, regardless of who is leading it hands-on?
Do we truly know who has which relevant competencies vis a vis assessing successors?
Are our top candidates continuously developing as leaders, or complacently waiting for their next step up the career ladder?
Are we picking the people who’ll be the best for the company, or the one’s we like the best?
Only when we can confidently say yes to each of these can we be sure that our excellence in strategy won’t be undermined or even killed by lack-luster succession planning.
