Its time India should start succession planning

The term “succession planning” is ignored in India by the political parties, public institutions, private corporate entities, and various other institutions in different areas.

The success of any organisation is based on the proper implementation of the succession planning. As in the case of political arena many political parties are struggling hard to find the best alternate leadership due to lack of succession planning.

The best example is of The Indian National Congress party which is having a tough time presently. Same is the case with the current crisis in the popular state-level political parties in the country like AIADMK and Samajwadi Party.

A similar kind of uncertainty lies also in public institutions in the area of banking and other public entities. In India, even in private companies, the leadership crises is occurring due to the lapses in implementing proper succession planning.

The big corporate houses like TATA Sons, Infosys, and many other companies are struggling hard to find the suitable alternate leaders for top-level positions.

It’s the same kind of situation even in the top-rung academic institutions like IIM’s, IIT’s, Universities etc which are struggling for the right candidates for the top positions i.e. Chairman, Director, etc This is due to the reluctance to implement the leadership succession planning.

It is just the opposite in countries like the USA, where many corporate houses strictly enforce leadership succession planning. Global technology companies like Microsoft, Apple Inc..seem not to have this succession problem. A majority of Indian companies are struggling with leadership issues.

The exit of Mr. Bill Gates and Mr. Steve Jobs and others did not hamper the business house performance, also it did not affect the investors.

There are a good number of reasons for most of the Indian organizationsare struggling hard but one major reason is family-run political parties and family-run business houses.

The globally known Indian companies are operated as family owned enterprises even today i.e. like Tata’s, Birla’s, Hinduja’s, Godrej’s, Ambani’s etc..

So the structural differences are harming the Indian organizationsin finding the best leaders. The second reason could be due to the present Leaders, who are reluctant to identify the successors and also in shaping them for the next generation of businesses.

In other words, it is an ego-problem. It may be intentional by ignoring the prospectivesuccessors, thinking that they are the rivals.

On the other side, Fortune 500 companies are appointing Indian nationals for CEO positions likeMs.IndiraNooyi, Mr.SatyaNadella, Mr.SunderPichai etc.. Their companies are doing extremely well.On the other hand, some big Indian companies are removing their CEO’s.

As it happened in the case of Infosys Limited in 2011, the year when Mr.Narayana Murthy left the company, it underwent for two consecutive years of problems with boards, leadership issues etc..

In 2013 Mr.Narayana Murthy re-entered as the chairman of the company to settle the leadership crisis and also to manage the company.

Now, a similar kind of problem has occurred with TATA Sons, where they removed the Chairman Mr.Cyrus Mistry, and Mr.Ratan Tata re-entered as the New Chairman to solve the issue.

Even the Indian start-ups are undergoing severe leadership challenges. The most popular e-commerce company, Flipkart is facing the crises at top-level positions.

The company had changed their CEO in January 2016, after which a good number of senior executives had left the company. Due to which the company is struggling hard to face the competition with global players like Amazon Inc.

The latest resignation of their CFO will be adding further crisis to the company. It also happened with other start-ups like Housing.com etc..

Hence start-ups must start implementing leadership succession planning to retain key talent to achieve high growth and also strengthens in facing global competition.

The corporate boards have a big responsibility to groom the next generation leaders by focusing leadership succession planning.

It is their duty to direct the businesses in the future, at the same time they must groom the next generation leaders. This adds value to the stakeholders.

Sometimes uncertainties create a leadership crisis as it happened recently in the case of MD & CEO of SAP India Mr.Ranjan Das who died after a massive cardiac arrest at the age of 42 years.

Finally, the possible reasons for implementing succession planning could be: non-performance, non-conformity with board decisions due to the ego problems of the executive, untimely death.

By: M Chandra Shekar & Prof Mohammed Akbar Ali Khan