At
the height of his professional career NR Narayana Murthy,
then CEO of Infosys, decided to voluntarily call it a day.
The succession was smooth and unruffled as there was no heir-apparent
among his family members. Not
so in many Indian corporate families. The most celebrated
of these is that of Mukesh and Anil Ambani brothers, who,
after the demise of their father Dhirubai Ambani, had the
business empire carved out between themselves. But a lot of
public dirty linen washing preceded the event. And this highlights
succession planning and business disputes in Indian business.
A
good succession planning system is a dream come true for most
HR managers. From the HR manager's point of view, succession
planning is all about ensuring that people with the right
skills are available to the company at the right juncture.
It can involve junior, middle or senior managements but is
generally used in the context of senior managers, including
the Executive Directors and Managing Directors/CEOs. A person
may become incapable of continuing in his present position
due to his lateral or vertical movement within the organization,
moving on elsewhere in search of greener pastures, end of
contractual tenure or even death. As such, both profit and
non-profit organizations (say a NGO) do need to have a proper
succession planning mechanism in place. The components of
good succession planning could be role-based, individual-based
and team-based. Most organizations tend to be boss or CEO-driven.
In such cases a sudden vacuum in this position can jeopardize
well-designed business plans. It is very difficult for anyone
to conceive of a Microsoft empire without Bill Gates or a
King Fisher organization without Vijay Mallya.
In
many elementary business management lessons, a hypothetical
situation is often conjured up whereby the students are asked
to explain what will happen to a company whose entire board
members and senior managers travel by a chartered flight and
the journey ends up in their death. The idea is to illustrate
the need for a proper succession planning mechanism. In companies
like Infosys, which are basically promoted by a bunch of unrelated
professionals, succession planning can be rather a neat exercise
because there exists a measure of premeditated consensus about
it. |
